The Lord of Misrule
by Amberdreams
Summary: Gabriel's death releases the real god Loki from his thousand-year imprisonment & he is out for revenge on the culprit - Gabriel. Furious that the archangel is out of his reach, discovering his powers are weakened by this unbelieving world, Loki goes after Kali and the Winchesters. The Norse god finds he has bitten off more than he can chew but pulls the boys down with him.
1. Chapter 1

Title: The Lord of Misrule  
Author: **amber1960**  
Artist: **adrenalineshots**  
Characters / Pairing: Sam and Dean Winchester, Kali, Thor, Loki, various OCs. Gen  
Rating: R for SPN-level violence  
Total word Count: ~ 26k, this Chapter is c3k  
Spoilers: None  
Warnings: Warping of Viking and Native American myths and legends. But hopefully in a good way. No disrespect to any living belief system is intended.  
written for the **spn_gen_bigbang** 2012

This story is complete but for once I'm going to post in chapters twice a week and see how it goes. So Chapter 1 today, Chapter 2 on Friday or Saturday.

**Summary**: The action takes place immediately after Lucifer kills Gabriel. Gabriel's death releases the real god Loki from his thousand-year imprisonment, and he is out for revenge on the architect of his suffering - Gabriel. Furious that the archangel is out of his reach, and discovering that his powers are weakened by this modern unbelieving world, Loki goes after Kali and the Winchesters. The Norse god finds he has bitten off more than he can chew, but unfortunately the boys are caught up too, when Kali decides to teach Loki a lesson.

**Acknowledgements**: Manifold thanks go to my awesome betas **tifaching** and **adrenalineshots** for all their help and encouragement on my first big bang. This story is much more coherent because of them and it goes without saying that any remaining errors are all mine!

**Art! ** This being a big bang and all, the lovely **adrenalineshots** did some wonderful art to perfectly compliment my fic. You must go and check out her art post over on Live Journal and leave her lots of love. The PDF version (which you can download over on LJ) has the art embedded but believe me, you need to see it large to really appreciate the colour and the humour and the sheer awesomeness.

**Disclaimer**: Sadly the Winchesters do not belong to me, all intellectual property of the CW still belongs to them; the surrounding packaging is mine.

Author's notes are at the end.

**The Lord of Misrule**

Loki doesn't know how long it is before he finally realises that the poison has stopped relentlessly dripping onto his naked flesh. Sigyn and her catching-bowl had disappeared long ago, and with her went his only relief from the burning acid.

After so many centuries of pain, its absence starts an ache like a gaping hole inside him. The hurt had defined him and now he doesn't know who he is any more. Somewhere deep down he understands that this craving for the return of that agony is warped and wrong, but he dismisses the feeling. He stands up, stretching out his cramped limbs for the first time in an eon and stares around him.

The world is not as Loki had left it.

::::

"Where do you think angels go when they die?"

"Gabriel was an Archangel, Dean."

"Yeah, whatever, the question still stands."

"I don't know, man. Do angels even have souls? I mean, we know they have grace, right. But is that the same thing?"

Kali made a sound that was halfway between disapproval and scorn, and the Winchesters exchanged a brief glance before shelving their discussion. They drove in silence for a while, seeing nothing but the endless miles of blacktop disappearing under the Impala's black hood, lit only by her headlights and the glittering rain. They were heading east, with no aim other than to put as many miles between them and Lucifer as possible, in as short a time as they could.

Dean wondered how long the fearsome Hindu goddess of death would deign to ride in their back seat. He sighed inwardly at this - yet another slice of weirdness in the life of the Winchester brothers. First it was giving rides to angels and demons, and now he could add a goddess to the list. You'd have thought he'd have lost the ability to be surprised by these quirks of fate, yet somehow catching Kali's dark, angry gaze in the rear view mirror was distinctly unsettling. In spite of the frisson of fear that he felt when he looked at her, Dean recognised the pain of loss beneath her simmering anger. _Kali must have loved Gabriel after all_, he mused, though thinking about Gabriel's love life made him squirm with embarrassment. He absently touched the package Gabe had given him where it lodged in his inside pocket.

Hours passed and they crossed into Massachusetts, the rain still coming down. It was the dark before dawn. Soon they would run out of road, and Dean didn't know what they would do then.

:::

Loki gazes around him. There is soft woollen carpet underfoot, finer than any in Odin's halls. Warm yellow lights glow without any visible flicker of flame, and there are strange colourful pictures hanging on the smooth painted walls.

He clothes his nakedness with a thought, smooths his fingers over the nap of the fabric, sensual and soft after so long with no sensation other than cold air, acid water and hard rock against his skin.

It is only then that he notices the blood.

:::

For a while all Sam was conscious of was Dean tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. It was irritating as hell. Dean was shifting about on the well-worn seat as if he was sitting on a pile of nettles instead of smooth leather.

His brother didn't do well with enforced silence, and Sam could feel the restless tension building. Kali's presence was like being near a brazier; the ancient goddess radiated heat and her seething anger was palpable. The interior of the car seemed laden with it, redolent with the scent of something spicy – cardamom, maybe, mixed with caustic notes of camphor.

Sam was surprised she was still there; he'd expected her to dematerialise as soon as they put a few miles between them and the divine carnage Lucifer had wrought at the Elysium Hotel, but for some reason, Kali had stayed in the back seat of the Impala for hours, her dark eyes filled with death.

Dean finally cracked, reached across and flipped on the radio. He shoved in a cassette and turned up the volume. Angus Young had barely launched into the first syllable when there was a bang, and sparks spat out of the cassette player.

"Hey!" Dean protested. "If you don't like AC/DC you only had to say!"

"Dean," Sam's tone was full of warning at the menace that was pouring off Kali in waves. Dean hunched his shoulders and pouted, mumbling something about _freaking hormonal Hindu goddesses_ that Sam desperately hoped Kali would ignore. He had just opened his mouth to say something (anything) to distract her attention when Dean swore loudly and slammed on the brakes so hard Sam was thrown shoulder first into the dash.

The Impala flung herself into a three sixty degree spin as she screeched to a halt, the night air filled with the sound of metal contorting, and acrid burning rubber replacing the heavy smell of Kali's incense.

Sam straightened up, moving gingerly, rubbing his bruised shoulder.

"Fuck. You okay, Sammy?" Dean sounded breathless as his hand groped for Sam and reassurance; blood was running freely down his face where he'd whacked his head against the steering wheel.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Dean. What the hell happened?" Sam didn't like to examine too closely how quickly he'd managed to assess the cut in his brother's forehead as negligible, or what that said about their crazy life. He glanced behind him, took in the empty back seat. "And where's Kali?"

The brothers turned to face forward as one. Limned by the bright white light of the Impala's headlights was a flash of vivid red elegance walking slowly towards the figure that had caused the emergency stop by appearing out of nowhere in front of the car.

Dean ran a hand over his face, wiping blood from his eyes.

"Well fuck me, Sam. Tell me that isn't who I think it is."

:::

Loki moves slowly through the deserted building, absorbing the carnage. There is blood everywhere and it makes the bitter, lonely god feel briefly at home. The familiarity of the iron tang in the air grounds him, gives him an anchor amidst all this strangeness. He steps over the large, dark-skinned man's entrails, avoids standing in the pool of dark blood and grey brain matter spilling from the broken skull of the thin man dressed in pale grey, a sartorial error of judgement given his fate, Loki thinks.

He turns a corner, enters another room and immediately stumbles over a fresh corpse.

He almost doesn't register the body at first, it's just one more to add to the growing tally, when something familiar about that grizzled form tugs at him. He pushes at the body with the toe of his boot then jumps backwards in shock.

"All Father!"

Loki is ill prepared for the wave of emotion that sweeps over him. It feels too much like sorrow and loss for him to acknowledge it. Wild eyed, Loki looks around the room, his breath suddenly short, his heart pounding. His gaze lights on another familiar, still comely face. Baldr the Beautiful. Even in death his fellow god glows with that special attraction Loki had always resented so fiercely. He cares nothing for the young god, and won't admit, even to himself, that he is relieved there is no sign in this place of death of a red bearded, well muscled form. He tells himself that this is because he only wishes to deal the final blow to the god of thunder himself, and will never know how deep that lie is buried.

He draws himself up, wraps darkness around him like a cloak. The room stinks of the distinctive ozone-like taint that is only left behind by the servants of the so-called nameless God and his White Christ son.

Loki's lip curls into a snarl. It is the stench of the one who imprisoned him and stole his form. Who stole Loki's life and left him in torment for centuries.

The Archangel named Gabriel.

:::

"Gabriel!"

"He must have got away from Lucifer somehow…," Sam started to speculate, but Dean had already scrambled out of the car, the Colt 1911 in his hands so fast Sam never saw how it got there. He was quick to follow suit, pulling his Taurus out and holding it ready, even though he knew if it was Gabriel they were facing, bullets would be useless. At least Sam could draw comfort from what Dean would call his spidey senses, that told him whoever/whatever this was, it was _not_ Lucifer.

He caught up with his brother, and shoulders bumping, they cautiously approached the curious tableau that was unfolding in front of them.

Gabriel (if it really was him) was gesticulating while Kali stood straight-backed and motionless, the personification of menace. Then the Hindu goddess moved. Or rather she grew, swelled, her form morphing as they watched into something alien and frightening. Her skin darkened, her outline wavered as new limbs sprouted and she assumed her natural form – the fearsome multi-armed shape of time and death. The air around her trembled.

Both Winchesters froze.

Gabriel shouted and lunged forward, grasping at the goddess. Kali said something the boys couldn't hear, and then she _pulsed_. That was the only word for it. In a kind of thrumming, electric, elemental heartbeat, the air around the goddess expanded, contracted then expanded again in a silent explosion of force.

The dark night seemed to expand with her, and when all was still once more, she was gone.

It took Sam a few moments to collect his senses and pick himself up off the ground where he'd been flung, and yet another moment realise his mistake. Kali hadn't gone anywhere – but they had.

:::

_Gabriel is here_. That lying-tongued, charming, twisted fox… Loki sees no irony in applying the same epithets to the Archangel that many had applied to Loki himself, the Norse Trickster, as he searches the empty building for his foe. The servant of Jehovah is here somewhere, Loki can taste him, and nothing is going to prevent him from having his revenge.

Except someone had got there before him.

Loki screams with rage and frustration as he stares at the marks of scorched black wings framing the pathetic corpse spread-eagled on the ground. Glass shatters and the framed paintings on the walls burst into flames with the power of that scream.

Gabriel is dead.

Odin is dead, and yet there is no sign of Ragnarok. Baldr is dead, and not by Loki's doing.

Loki falls to his knees, exhausted, wondering at his own weakness. No longer distracted by seeking out Gabriel, Loki at last realises there is something very wrong with this world he has woken into. In fact, and more importantly, there is something very wrong with _him_.

He has never felt this weak, this impotent before, not even while he was bound and chained and suffering. What in Hel is happening to him?

Sitting on the stained carpet, next to the twisted remains of his biggest enemy, Loki reaches out, seeking for the foundation of his strength, the worship of his followers, and finds…nothing. Or as near to nothing as made no difference, anyway. Here and there he finds a faint spark that indicates a semblance of belief, though even those seem tangled up in something strange and different, images of himself and the others in his pantheon that are so distorted as to be almost unrecognisable.

He breathes deeply, trying to calm himself. If the people of this world – this time – are so devoid of the respect he requires, he will just have to find another source of power to feed on. He reaches out again, this time searching along the trace elements of energy that hang in the air of the building he's in. The remnants of the struggles that have taken place here and left so much destruction are still alive and easy to find. He sticks his pointed tongue out, tasting the flavours with relish.

The first thread he follows burns him like the poison he's just escaped from and he recoils faster than a snake, not only from the pain, but from the unbearable angelic stink. He is left with a name – Lucifer - and a feeling of deep revulsion. This creature is kin to Gabriel, though much sharper and more dangerous, if Loki isn't mistaken. Casting about again, he finds another darker, smokier thread. He follows a trail seasoned with hints of oriental spices, reaches its origin and smiles. Yes, this is the one. She is ancient and very powerful, and the anger that consumes her will leave her open to his wiles.

And with her is something else, something (or rather someone) whose flavour Loki recognises. This ancient goddess is keeping poor company, Loki thinks. Travelling with mortals would be bad enough, but association with angels also taints these two humans he senses. He can feel the mark of the servants of Jehovah on them, and not just the mark. They have also been in the company of Gabriel, and carry his enemy's gifts.

Loki may have been denied his vengeance but he can still have some fun with Gabriel's friends before he is done here.

The Trickster god gathers his remaining energy and twists the air, folding space to haul himself along Kali's tendrils of power into her physical presence. He finds himself standing on a smooth black surface in the rain, facing twin white lights like glaring eyes, roaring towards him at impossible speed. Startled, Loki uses a little more of his failing strength to stop the beast's advance then stands firm to await Kali's approach from out of the maw of her metal dragon.

Loki takes a moment to appreciate the angular beauty of this strange Eastern goddess as she halts merely an arm's length away, her fathomless dark eyes glinting in the reflected light from her silenced monster.

"You are not Gabriel. Why are you wearing his form?" She asks without ceremony.

"You have that about face, my lady. Your Gabriel stole my body when he bound me to rocks with the entrails of my own child, and left me to eternal torment." Loki's own rage has risen to match Kali's, and around them Loki can feel the energies surging and crackling with a vitality that is making his gut ache with hunger. He steps closer.

"Really?" Kali raises one perfect eyebrow. "It would appear that your torment was less than eternal then, as here you stand."

Loki feels his lips draw up in a semblance of a grin. "I can thank another cursed angel for that, I think. Gabriel's death freed me, but my imprisonment has left me weak, and this…" he makes a sweeping, scornful gesture with both arms outstretched, "This world is a feeble place, containing little worthwhile sustenance."

If he is hoping for sympathy from the goddess, he fails to find it. Kali's expression remains impassive. It is clear Loki will just have to take what he wants. He steps forward, both hands outstretched to grasp Kali's slim brown arms. But instead of the warm feminine flesh he is anticipating, his hands clutch at something black and burning, a devastating power that is all consuming and unlike anything the Norse god has ever touched before. Evidently this strange Indian deity is not suffering from a lack of followers who believe in _her_. Loki doesn't even have time to scream a protest as Kali speaks.

"If this world is not to your liking, perhaps you would be happier revisiting your glory days. Think of it as an opportunity for redemption, you petty little anachronism."

Bitterness and bile fill Loki's mouth at the ease with which Kali turns his world inside out; how she smoothly begins twisting the powerless Norse god's sense of time and place.

:::

It is entirely coincidental, though Kali thinks that Loki will probably count it as a gift, that her actions scoop up the Winchester brothers alongside the Trickster god and deposit them all several hundred miles north and several hundred years into the past.

For a moment Kali considers bringing the humans back immediately, then she shrugs. The two men will be safer there. The world in the here and now will be safer with them absent from it. Their bodies are warded from detection by the angels, and any demon will have difficulty locating them so many years in the past – and without their true vessels, both Lucifer and Michael will have to work much harder to make their Judeo-Christian apocalypse work.

Perhaps this was fortuitous. Baldr's plan to thwart the Light-bearer might yet come to fruition simply via happenstance.

People forget she is not only a power of destruction and death, but of time and change, and above all, empowerment. The Winchesters were very fortunate the latter aspect is ascendant at the moment. Kali smiles, her face and form restored to its most benign aspect.

* * *

_A/N : Here endeth Chapter 1, I hope you have enjoyed it and will be back to read Chapter 2 at the end of the week! More hurt!Boys and other godly shennanigans to come._


	2. Chapter 2

_So__ here we are, as promised, chapter 2...time to find out what's happened to Sam and Dean..._

* * *

**Chapter 2**

Sam raised his head and looked around him, feeling dizzy and confused.

The sun was warm and high in the east. A fly butted aimlessly against Sam's cheek and he absently batted it away. The air was scented with the profusion of wild flowers that surrounded the young hunter, and apart from the buzz of insects and bird song, the world was silent. No rain no traffic, no distant airplanes overhead. No sign of Kali, or of Gabriel.

No Dean.

Where the hell was he, and where was his brother?

Panic fluttered in Sam's chest as he stood up. Drawing himself up to his full height, he stared around him. He was in a wide, open, fragrant meadow, which at any other time he might have found beautiful. Now all he could think was that Dean wasn't here, and he didn't know what that meant, but knowing Winchester luck, it couldn't bode well. He turned slowly, taking in the sweep of the shallow slope down to a small river to his right, the gentle rise of the meadow to his left. Across the river there was no sign of life as far as the eye could see, right up to the edge of a wooded area in the distance, so Sam turned left and west, with his back to the sun, and headed uphill. Maybe there would be a road or something over this hill, some way of getting his bearings.

Maybe Dean would be there.

He reached the crest of the ridge in minutes, but the vista that greeted him was very little different from the one behind him, save for the absence of a river. There was a broad expanse of lush grassland that led to a largely deciduous woodland that seemed to spread from north to south in an unbroken green darkness that appeared too pristine to be real. As far as Sam could see, there was no sign of a human touch – no pylons, no telegraph poles, no firebreaks in the forest, no buildings, nothing.

Then he saw two things that gave the lie to that. Firstly, off to the north Sam spotted smoke. Before he could get too excited about what that might signify, there was movement on the edge of the forest, and a figure stepped out into the light.

Sam squinted, puzzled. His eyesight was good, but the forest was about a mile away, and so he wasn't certain of what he was seeing. Because the figure looked as though it had stepped out of Last of the Mohicans instead of a wood, dressed as she was in a buckskin tunic and tasselled boots, long straight black hair kept off her face by some sort of decorated head band. Instinct caused Sam to drop from where he was silhouetted against the bright sun, and he stayed still, observing.

The woman seemed to be collecting some sort of plant, placing the leaves into a leather pouch slung over her shoulder. Sam was just contemplating getting up to walk over and approach her when the woman paused in her work. She crouched down to investigate what looked from the distance to be a bundle of rags, then threw her head back and called out in a wailing warble that carried easily through the still air. Sam froze and waited. Within moments, two more figures, also dressed as Native Americans (what was this? Some kind of re-enactment society?) emerged from under the shadow of the trees. The newcomers were male, their torsos bare except for where they had reddened their skin with paint, and they were quickly at the woman's side. The sound of their voices drifted towards Sam on the breeze, and though he couldn't make out their words, it sounded as though they were arguing about something. After a few minutes of gesticulating, the two men bowed to the woman's will and lifted up the bundle from the ground to hang limply between them.

Sam tensed and rose to his feet so quickly the rush of blood to his head made him dizzy. That was no bundle of rags. He could see clearly now, the dangling limbs, the glint of the sun catching on something silver that dropped to the ground from a slack hand and was quickly scooped up by the woman.

That was an unconscious man.

It was Dean.

:::

Sam was on his feet and running before he had time for a single conscious thought. The little party was already slipping into the darkness under the forest canopy when Sam reached the bottom of the slope, and he was still some 500 yards away when they disappeared from view.

"No, wait! Stop!"

Sam yelled, and he thought he saw the pale flash of a face streaked with red like blood turning to look at him for a second, then it was gone. He speeded up and hit the forest edge at full pelt, crashing through thick undergrowth heedless of the damage he was causing to both the trees and to himself. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the green shadowed gloom, and a little while longer to realise he had lost the trail all together.

"Dean!" He shouted, but his voice seemed to die and be absorbed into the thick layer of dead leaves underfoot. He couldn't hear anything over the rasping of his own panting breaths and the hammering of his heart.

He staggered to a halt, breathing heavily, bent over and leaned both hands on his thighs, trying to get his breath back.

"Fuck."

:::

Wide eyed, Kiim hid behind a tree, keeping as silent as the secret she was named after, watching the giant destroying the Beothuk's forest home with his huge flailing limbs. When he finally stilled his thrashing about, and stood with his shaggy head hung low huffing through his nose like a wounded elk, she decided that he was just a man, after all. Albeit a very large, very loud and very clumsy one.

She rested an ochre stained hand against the rough bark of the tree and wondered about venturing out to greet the giant, but two things prevented her from taking that tentative step. First was the slight hiss from her brother Esiban from behind her. He and their cousin Ishkode were waiting impatiently behind her, holding the wounded outsider she had insisted they take home to tend. It was a timely reminder that her injured charge needed attention.

Second was the faint sound of loud voices approaching from the meadow, coupled with the knowledge that her people were not yet ready to approach the settlement of pale haired, pale skinned strangers who had recently set up camp on the northern promontory near the sea.

Best to stick to her original plan, half formed when she had discovered the unconscious man in the midst of her herb gathering. She nodded to herself. Yes. Heal the one who was hurt and put these new people in their debt, and the Beothuk would be on a strong footing from the start.

With the barest rustle of leaves, Kiim and her companions faded into the woods with their insensate burden, leaving the giant bear of a man to be reunited with his tribe.

:::

Sam straightened up and started making his way back the way he'd come. At one point he whipped around, thinking he'd heard something moving behind him, but there was nothing there. He ran a hand through his hair, frowning when his fingers snagged on a twig caught there when he'd stormed after Dean like a headless chicken. He was somewhat disgusted with his lack of forethought, but was distracted from his self recriminations by the sound of approaching voices as he stepped out from under the canopy of the trees into the setting sunlight.

The last thing he was expecting to greet him was the point of a spear pressed up under his chin. He made a move to get his hand behind his back to pull out his Taurus, but his opponents had the advantage of numbers and had him surrounded before he could blink. There was a man either side of him, and both arms were gripped immediately. Sam tried his best to look harmless, though it was hard to see what was going on with the low sun blinding him.

"Hey, it's ok, I'm just looking for my brother, see?" He said, smiling and using his most diplomatic tone. Which it soon became clear was totally wasted, as the men surrounding him began to speak.

He couldn't understand a word.

As the men argued, presumably over what to do with him, Sam began to tune into to the flow of the language, and realised he recognised one or two words from his linguistics history classes at Stanford. One of them seemed to say something like bruðir, which might have been in response to him saying he was looking for his brother. It gradually dawned on him this was no bunch of over enthusiastic Renaissance Festival escapees - these hairy, fur wearing guys brandishing very sharp, very lethal looking swords, axes and spears (fucking _spears_!) were the real deal. And from the sound of it, they were speaking Old Norse, which meant they were Vikings.

_Shitshitshit. What had Kali done? And where the hell was Gabriel?_

:::

Dean woke up confused.

He was fairly certain he'd been in the Impala with Sam; he thought he remembered getting a knock to the head when he'd had to pull off an emergency stop because some douchebag was standing in the road right in front of him, then everything was a muddled blank.

He'd learned a long time ago that if you came to unsure of your surroundings, it was a good idea to keep your eyes shut until you'd gleaned as much information as you possibly could, and hopefully had a chance to remember what your latest cover story was for the medics. Only this didn't smell or feel much like a hospital, though his head ached like a motherfucker, which probably meant that was where he should have been, or _would_ have been, if Sam had any say in the matter. Sam didn't like to mess about with head injuries any more because, as he kept telling Dean (always overthinking, his Sammy), one hit too many and Dean could be scrambled for good.

And if Sam hadn't had a say in where he was, that was something Dean should immediately get worried about because it might mean something bad had happened to Sam and – well. Big brother habits die hard and it's his job to worry, right?

The thought of Sam in trouble got his heart rate up, and he struggled for a second to control his breathing, to keep it nice and even so he could listen and find out as much as he could before anyone realised he was awake.

He nearly started out of his skin at the touch of a small hand on his bare chest, followed the swipe of something cool and wet across his forehead. He hadn't sensed anyone close, or heard anyone approach, and that rattled him, even if from the feel of it the hand belonged to a woman or a child and didn't _feel_ dangerous .

_Fuck, Winchester, you're losing your touch!_ _Come on, pay attention_…

He tried to focus, though it was difficult, with his thoughts all jumbled up worse than Bobby's library, because at least that had a system, even if it was one known only to the old hunter, and now Dean was digressing, and liable to get lost in a maze of memories and irrelevancies.

He concentrated hard, trying to make sense of what he did know.

It felt as if he was lying on a floor, not a bed, though there was something soft between him and the floor and …was that fur under his fingers? He thought he was in an enclosed space, as smells were intensified – earth and leather and smoke, wet dog and something vaguely herbal he couldn't quite identify, though no doubt Sam would have known instantly. The light was flickering and he could hear a fire crackle and pop somewhere to his left, and feel the warmth from its flames against his naked flesh. His lower half was covered, he could feel the weight of the blanket or coverlet over his legs and groin, but his torso was bared to the air.

As the girl washed him down, she hummed, nothing that Dean could recognise, just a pleasant, soothing, rhythmic tune that curled and swooped and went nowhere, like a swift hunting insects on a summer breeze.

So what could he conclude from all of this? That his brain was so addled he was waxing all poetical. That it was probably night time because the breeze coming through the open tent flap or whatever was cool and smelt like evening, and he was maybe in a campsite of some sort, because he could hear people moving about outside, as well as the faint rustle of movement from the girl or woman who was ministering to him. That none of this information told him where he was, how he'd got there, or most importantly, where Sam was.

All of which meant that it was probably time to find out what the hell was going on around here.

Dean opened his eyes.

:::

Although he seems to be thoroughly trapped, Loki cannot resist the pull of Kali's power, and moves forward eagerly to steal as much as he can before she realises what he is doing. He fathoms out too late as he steps within her aura that the Hindu goddess is all too aware of his weakness, his foolish overconfidence, and of his illicit designs on her power.

His skin crackles as she wraps the force more securely around him, and he feels rather than sees her satisfied smile as the awareness that there really is no escape sweeps over him.

Time contorts around him, but in spite of the agony that brings, Loki's quick mind is searching for loopholes, exit strategies, any tiny thread that he can grasp to thwart Kali's purpose. With relief he finally senses the thinnest, faintest undercurrent of belief in Asgard, and latches onto it like a lifeline.

He twists and strains and cries out at the sudden wrench in his gut as Kali's will flexes then gives way, and he tumbles free. He lands, cat-like on all fours, feeling smugly triumphant at his cleverness. He had bent the fierce female goddess' desires and made them his own, and had managed to steal some of her strength in the bargain. She had wanted to send him somewhere lost and lonely, but he had thwarted her plans and made it back to where he belonged.

His built in chronometer tells him perhaps this time is not perfect, it's just before the first millennium, when the White Christ has already taken a strong hold in the homelands of the Asgardians, but he tells himself this is a vast improvement on the desolate times where Kali had intended to strand him.

Loki pulls himself up to his full height, which isn't overly impressive compared to his foster brother, Thor, but he cares not at this moment, because he wants to savour the taste of his many worshippers. He sends out a tendril of thought, seeking his people and their longing for their gods and finds…something so weak and pathetic he is momentarily shocked out of his complacency.

"What trickery is this?" He demands, staring at the beautiful landscape that surrounds him. Loki is blind to its untouched loveliness, feeling only its virtual vacuum as a source of strength for him. Where are the believers, where are his Vikings? Where is the respect (the love) he deserves?

Scanning with all his senses, Loki can feel the faint thread that had brought him here, and follows it. For now, it seems he is stuck on this vast yet under-populated continent, still many leagues from the true source of his power. He is seething with frustration that in spite of the energy he stole from Kali, he is still too weak to range farther afield. Still, Loki is cunning and resourceful. All he needs is a foothold, and he can build from here.

All he needs are some gullible humans and he can mould them into whatever form he desires.

He finds what he is looking for behind a wooden palisade, in a small settlement facing north and east, looking out towards far distant Greenland as if it is trying to see where it came from. There are maybe a hundred and fifty faithful souls huddled there, enough for Loki to work with.

He smiles.

:::

Dean didn't know what he had expected after little session of blind detective work, but this beautiful child that was leaning over him wasn't it. Surely she couldn't have been more than fourteen, sloe-dark eyes huge in a perfect oval face, her straight black hair hanging loose in a shining curtain must have been long enough for her to sit on. Unfortunately his headache seemed to grow in strength as his bewildered gaze took in her buckskin dress, the red ochre body-paint liberally smeared across her smooth forehead and high cheekbones, bare upper arms and wrists. Behind her he could see firelight flickering over wooden tent supports that angled up into a central point where a hole allowed the smoke to escape into the night air. It had to be a frigging tepee.

"Fuck me, Sammy. I've woken up in Dances with Wolves." He murmured, and let his heavy eyelids fall shut again to block out the throbbing pain. A slim arm slid behind his head to raise it off the ground, and he felt the rim of a wooden cup pressed against his lips. He opened his eyes again and let his sore neck take his own weight. He took a cautious sip of the liquid being offered. It was just water, but that first sip reminded Dean how thirsty he was and he gulped the rest down eagerly. It tasted wonderful. Cold, a little earthy and fresh.

He attempted to sit up but his head was swimming and his stomach clenched with a sudden nausea. Not wanting to throw up the water he'd just drunk, Dean allowed himself to be lowered back down.

"Th'nk you," he told the girl, hating how his words were slurring but helpless to fight against the pull of the darkness that was beckoning him again. He gave up the struggle and allowed himself to slide back into a blessedly pain-free unconsciousness.

Kiim sat back for a moment and waited to see if the stranger would speak again, but he seemed to have sunk back into sleep. A night breeze tickled the bare soles of her feet where she knelt, as someone lifted the entrance flap of the tepee. Without looking round she smiled and greeted her brother. Anyone else would have requested permission before entering the siblings' family home.

"Heya, Esiban."

"Is he awake?" Esiban asked, walking round the fire to sit cross-legged on the opposite side of the stranger.

"He spoke a moment ago, but I couldn't understand him. His head wounds are so bad, I'm surprised he woke at all, but I think his spirit is strong."

Esiban nodded. He could certainly attest to the stranger's well-muscled body, if not to the strength of his spirit. He was happy to defer to his clever sister when it came to the mysterious workings of the spirit world. He and Ishikode had struggled to carry the big man back to their camp, and manhandling him while they helped Kiim strip him of his strange clothing had been exhausting work. The Beothuk were considered lofty among the Folk, but for the most part, these bright-haired, pale-eyed strangers came from a taller and heavier stock, and this one was the tallest they had seen so far. Esiban was no holy man, but he saw no reason that the stranger's spirit would not match his body. Probably, Esiban speculated, the stranger's weyekin was a bear, or maybe a wolf. Something fierce and powerful, where his own racoon weyekin was all about being clever and dexterous.

Esiban picked up the knife they had found when they had stripped the stranger, and ran his fingers over the silver-grey coloured blade, wondering afresh at its cool hard surface. It looked as if it was made of cloudy moonlight or water, or maybe a mixture of both, and its edge was as sharp as a freshly broken flint. He and his fellow braves had observed the strangers' settlement for many days, and had seen several of these weapons from a distance, but this was the first time any of the Beothuk had handled one.

The other item that had dropped from the stranger's hand when they had first lifted him up was a larger mystery. Its strange squared off angular shape seemed to hold no purpose, but its shiny silver surface was very finely decorated with leaf-like patterns that Esiban's craftsman's fingers itched to try carving into the next bone awl he would make for his sister's leather working. And the mother of pearl that adorned the part that appeared to be where one gripped the object was very beautiful. Esiban had never seen a shell large enough to provide such a large and perfectly flat piece that must have been required to make this thing.

Esiban concluded that all these things added up to this outsider being full of luck, something born out by the reddish tint to the man's facial hair, and the darker red of the strange clothing he'd been wearing on his upper body, red being held sacred by the Beothuk.

There was a soft "heya" from the entrance and Nonosabawsut, the Beothuk's holy man and their grandfather, lifted the flap and entered, interrupting the young man's reverie. He nodded a greeting at Esiban, then Kiim. He circled the fire and squatted down next to Esiban, staring at the stranger's sleeping form, taking in the unusually pale skin that was speckled with flecks of darker gold, like a thrush's breast.

"You think this man is a warrior?" Nonosabawsut asked, not really expecting an answer. Kiim replied anyway, pointing to the visible jagged wound with its fresh stitches on the stranger's temple, and the invisible lump at the back of his skull that she'd left untouched, just being careful to pad the stranger's head so it wasn't resting any weight on the contusion. She thought she might have to drain it later, if it showed no sign of reducing on its own. She was glad her grandfather had come; he could make sure her medicines were working. She was newly come to her position as the tribe's medicine woman after the death of her mother, and still needed reassurance on occasion.

"Two heavy blows, front and back – I'd say whoever did this took him by surprise; this one a cowardly attack from behind, or perhaps delivered after the first blow took him down."

Then she pointed to several other scars on the man's chest and arms. "I think he is a fighter. A veteran of many battles. But this scar is very strange. I have never seen anything like this before." She laid her palm over the raised pink scar tissue in the shape of a handprint on the man's shoulder.

Nonosabawsut nodded. "The mark of the Great Spirit," he said. He touched the stranger's bare chest and felt the steady beat of the man's heart with approval.

"When he regains his strength, we will test him. I wish to see a weyekin of these strangers before we talk to them about trade. This one can stand for his people." The wise man rose to his feet easily for such an elderly man.

"Tend him well, child," he instructed Kiim, "And bring him to me when he is ready for the spirit journey."

:::

When Sam was half dragged, half guided into the Viking settlement, the last person he expected to head the welcoming committee when he got there was Gabriel. Then again, he supposed he should have known the archangel would be here somewhere. He couldn't decide whether to be relieved or just more worried by the archangel's presence, but he supposed, correctly, that he wouldn't have to wait long to find out.

Gabriel approached with an uncharacteristic sneer and a swagger that had Sam frowning again. Something about this didn't feel right to the younger Winchester.

"Well, look who it is. So Kali threw a minnow back into the pond along with the pike, did she?"

Sam looked down at Gabriel's vessel's familiar features and saw no sign of recognition in those golden-brown eyes.

"You have don't remember me or Dean, do you?" Sam asked slowly, his brain whirring through possibilities and coming up blank. He was now certain of one thing though.

"You are not Gabriel, are you," He made his conclusion a statement rather than a question.

Not-Gabriel clapped his hands, very slowly, in derisory applause. The men ranged on either side of the diminutive figure were looking puzzled, but seemed content to wait patiently for the scene to play out. Sam wondered what had been said about him before his capture, if anything, because it had appeared that the men who had found him on the forest edge had been deliberately seeking him out.

"Well done, mortal, well played indeed. I would have been very insulted if you had thought I could have anything to do with that duplicitous, devious, treacherous bastard. Especially as I've just found out that he not only stole my life by leaving me to fester in the prison he fashioned for me, but that he also stole my favoured form. He's been prancing around in _my_ body for several hundred years, while I rotted, bound in the entrails of my own son."

As Not-Gabriel was speaking, realisation was dawning on Sam. His last words confirmed Sam's theory. The prison, the bindings, and knowing what Sam did about Gabriel's trickster existence, there was only one story that fitted in this context.

"I know who you are," he said. "You are Loki."

* * *

_A/N hope you are still finding something worth reading and will join me for Chapter 3 on Monday! I'd love to know what you think of it so feel free to comment. :D_


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Dean woke to the soft touch of daylight feathering his unshaven cheek. It was nice. Soothing. For a few blessed moments he rested there and simply enjoyed the warmth, before the memories came crashing back in full glorious Technicolor.

He had no idea where he was, or what was going on, where Gabriel and Kali were or, more importantly, where Sam was. The former were irritants, niggly worries, but the latter? That was a situation where Dean Winchester could not tolerate staying ignorant.

That was when he noticed that although his head felt much better, his mouth tasted like ass, he had a raging hunger and thirst like you wouldn't believe, and more urgently, a full bladder begging for relief.

He sat up carefully, remembering the nausea from the night before, but apart from a noisy clamouring to be fed, his stomach behaved itself. Geeze, but pie-deprivation was so debilitating. The sitting up having gone so well, Dean thought he could risk standing. A brief moment of wooziness soon passed, and though his legs were a little wobbly, he thought this was as much from hunger as from any lingering effects from the concussion.

A quick scan of the interior of the tepee (_a fucking tepee, Sammy!) _rewarded him with his boot knife, swiftly slipped back into its sheath, and the pearl-handled colt, which he tucked into the waistband of his jeans as usual, though it felt weird without any shirts to cover it up. There was no sign of his t shirt and button-down, and he discovered the reason for that absence when he eventually ducked out of the tepee to find his still damp missing items of clothing spread over a bush drying in the early morning sunlight.

It was a brave new world, but just how brave and how new took Dean a little while longer than it had taken Sam to work out. Later Dean would blame his lack of speed on the uptake on his concussion and the urgency of his need to piss, a natural imperative that was currently overriding just about everything. He didn't take in much of his surroundings on the first pass as his priority was finding the nearest toilet facility, and failing to spot anything recognisable in that category, he wavered his way to the closest patch of trees and bushes that seemed to offer the most privacy, and quickly relieved himself.

Primary requirements met, he could pay a bit more attention to his surroundings as he returned to the heart of the settlement. It was evident that Kali or Gabriel, or maybe both of them? had really done a number on the Winchesters this time. That was assuming that Sam was here too, and really, his brother damn well better be somewhere nearby or there would be hell to pay…and you could take that as literally as you liked, given the circumstances the Winchesters were facing, with the Apocalypse looming and all.

Outside the tepee he'd emerged from earlier, a chubby toddler was sitting on the beaten earth, playing with an equally chubby puppy. Nearby, keeping half an eye on the child, were two women dressed in pale buckskin tunic dresses, decorated with fringing and shell-beads, who were busy with domestic chores. Their bare arms and faces were painted with the same red ochre patterns as the girl who'd tended him. One of the women seemed to be heating water in a birch-bark container by placing hot stones in it, the other was scraping at the hide of some dead animal, possibly a small deer if the four hooves still attached to its skin were anything to go by. Dean thought that the tool she was using was a sharp stone. Christ. What kind of place was this that it didn't even have metal tools?

The settlement, camp, whatever, was small but bustling with activity, mostly women and children from what Dean could see. Perhaps the menfolk were out hunting or something. How would Dean know? Sam was the one with the fancy anthropological leanings after all. Though none of the women seemed overtly interested in the half naked stranger standing like a dork in their midst, he could feel their surreptitious scrutiny. He flushed and dragged his clothes off their improvised drier and pulled the t-shirt back on, even though it was still damp.

Jesus H Christ indeed. No way was this a group of wannabe hippy re-enactors. He'd time travelled too often now not to recognise the real deal when faced with it again. This, however, was shaping up to be even more terrifying and strange than either of his previous experiences.

The quiet that surrounded the settlement spoke of a remoteness from everything modern that was worrying the hell out of Dean. The flint scraper, the lack of any sign of worked metal in either tools or jewellery, that absence of distant traffic noise or aircraft trails in the cloudless blue of the sky, the crystal clarity of the air he was breathing – all spoke of a world untouched by any man-made pollution other than the burning of campfires for far longer than Dean was comfortable contemplating. He tried to tell himself that he could be mistaken; it could be that Kali had merely translated them to some place miles from the nearest civilisation, but his heart was telling him that he'd come a lot farther than that.

It made finding Sam even more important. Dean's head might be feeling a bit more together in terms of his cracked cranium knitting itself back into one piece, but the implications of being stranded back in time by centuries rather than mere decades was making his brain ache.

For a few moments he contemplated that maybe this was a good thing, to have that amount of distance between the Winchesters and Lucifer and his minions, to be this remote from Michael and his machinations.

But then he thought of Adam, and the poor sap Lucifer was wearing as his meat suit (and wearing out), and of the damage those self centred angel dicks would cause to countless innocent humans while fighting out their (possibly) scaled down apocalypse. No. Whether the Winchesters were fated to be angel condoms or not, Dean knew deep down, they had to try to stop this madness, and finding the remaining two rings of the Horsemen was therefore the only game in town.

None of which could be achieved while they were stuck here. Wherever and whenever here was. One thing seemed clear – if Sam had travelled with him this time, he hadn't ended up in the same place, so Dean needed to get out of here. Having made his decision, Dean headed back towards the central tepee to retrieve his jacket, shrugging into his slightly soggy plaid shirt as he walked.

Focused on his goal, Dean practically fell over the young girl who'd been looking after him when she emerged from the dark interior of the tent.

"Sorry," he said, grasping a slender shoulder to steady her. She said something that sounded friendly enough, and her smile seemed to confirm that, though he had absolutely no idea what her words meant.

"Um. I don't know what you are talking about, and I'm very grateful for everything you've done for me, but I need to get out of here and find my brother, so…," he gestured at her in an aimless fashion, wondering how he was going to move her out of his way as she was blocking his path to his jacket.

She didn't shift but started talking again, a meaningless babble of words and hand gestures. Dean wished even harder that Sam was there. His freaky giant brother seemed to have a knack of making himself understood even when language was a barrier, a talent that Dean just didn't possess. He was fine with the sweet-talking but you needed words for that.

"Sweetheart, this is great, just like first contact and all that, but I really gotta go. I bet Sam would be able to understand you; my little brother, he's the brains of the family, studied all sorts of languages and crap at Stanford, but I have no clue what you are sayin' and times a tickin'."

He made to step round her then started as a hand came from behind him and grasped his shoulder.

"Holy crap!" he exclaimed, spinning round. "You folk around here need to make more noise when you walk, you're scaring the life out of me creeping round all silent and shit."

The person responsible for his racing heartbeat was scarcely taller than the child now behind him in the tepee, and left Dean wondering how the tiny wizened man had actually reached his shoulder. The girl moved to Dean's side and nodded her head respectfully at the old man.

"Heya, Nonosabawsut," she said.

"Heya, Kiim." The man replied.

The girl started talking to the old man then, resting her hand on Dean's arm in an unconscious gesture that anchored him to the spot.

Dean might have given all the credit to Sam for being the linguist and scholar, but he wasn't stupid. Already he was tuning into the pattern of speech of these people, and assumed that the first words used here was a greeting of some sort, and therefore the second of the words being used was most likely a name. Well, being polite couldn't hurt.

He waited until there was a pause in the flow and cleared his throat.

"Heya, Nonoh-sab-awsut and…erm, Keem?"

He flushed under the weight of their stares at his probably very poor mimicking skills, but persevered regardless. He pointed at his chest, "Dean" then at the girl.

"Keem?"

The girl giggled and the old man mad a grunting noise that could have been construed as a chuckle.

"Kiim!" She exclaimed, then, grabbing Dean's hand, she placed it on the old man's chest, so Dean could feel the heartbeat beneath the thin leather tunic.

"Nonosabawsut." She said.

The old man, Nonosabawsut, reached up and placed his gnarled hand onto Dean's chest, over the anti-possession tattoo. "Dean."

"Great. So now we're all acquainted, I really have to go find Sam." He made to move away but Nonosabawsut didn't remove his hand, and somehow Dean couldn't find the strength of will to brush the old man out of his way.

Kiim said something, then tugged on his arm when he didn't respond. Faced with twin determined expressions, Dean gave up the struggle. Perhaps if he went along with whatever it was these people wanted, they would be able to help him find out whether Sam was here too, and help them find a way home, if that was even possible.

He could be patient. If he had to be.

:::

There was a murmur from the gathering of Vikings when they heard Sam mention Loki's name. There had been no reaction to the rest of their conversation, so Sam had assumed that the crowd were not understanding any of the exchange. He was proved correct moments later, when Loki turned to address the tallest of the group, a broad shouldered middle-aged blonde guy with an amiable looking face that was currently frowning at Sam.

The man's frown only deepened at Loki's words, and Sam thought that couldn't mean anything good, especially as the grip of the men who had been holding him but loosely since he had arrived in the settlement had suddenly tightened, so that he could feel their fingers biting into his biceps hard enough to bruise.

Loki turned back to Sam, smiling.

"In case you were wondering, I just told them that you are a warrior without honour, that you have been insulting me and all the men here in your foreign tongue, impugning their women's virtue and mocking their gods. They are not very happy with you."

"You…why are you lying to these people like this? I never did anything to you - we only just met. I don't even know you!"

"Ah but I know _you_, Sam Winchester. I stole you and your brother's names and other pertinent details from Kali before she flung us all into this pox ridden Hel hole. And you want to know why I'm doing this?" Loki leant in and yanked viciously on a handful of Sam's hair to pull his head closer. He hissed into Sam's ear, even though no one else there could understand the language they were speaking unless the capricious god wished it.

"Because you and your brother knew Gabriel. You were his friends and you carry his gift, together with the mark of his cursed angel kin. I owe that thieving, mangy, black-winged crow a myriad of tortures, but he is dead and a thousand years out of my reach, while you – you are here."

Sam felt Loki's spittle hit his cheek and it burnt like acid. He shivered. A crazy pagan god with a grudge, ready to stir up a group of armed men sounded like a recipe for disaster, as if being trapped in the distant past with no way home wasn't bad enough.

Loki moved over to the Vikings and spoke again to the tall one who appeared to be their leader, who then turned to his comrades and started to speak – a long impassioned speech that had the ring of a formal declaration.

"_Givr maþr oquæþins orð manni, þu ær æi mans maki oc eig maþr i brysti. Ek ær maþr sum þv, þeir skvlv møtaz a þriggia vægha motum. Cumbr þan orð havr giuit oc þan cumbr eig þer orð havr lutit, þa mvn han vara svm han heitir, ær eig eiðgangr oc eig vitnisbær huarti firi man ælla kvnv. Cumbr oc þan orð havr lutit oc eig þan orð havr giuit, þa opar han þry niþingx op oc markar han a iarþv, þa se han maþr þæss værri þet talaþi han eig halla þorþi. Nv møtaz þeir baþir mz fullum vapnvm. Faldr þan orð havr lutit, gildr mz haluum gialdum. Faldr þan orð havr giuit. Gløpr orða værstr. Tunga houuðbani. Liggi i vgildum acri._"

Loki materialised at Sam's side again. The creature might be in a human form, but he seemed to move fluidly, like quicksilver, and it was creeping Sam out. Loki helpfully whispered a summarised translation into Sam's ear. "Basically he says that if a man speaks insults, the man he has insulted will meet him fully armed, and will kill or incapacitate him. Weregild will be paid, one way or another, Sam Winchester."

The tall blonde man stepped forward and spat at Sam's feet.

"Niðingr!" The man exclaimed, his hand clenched on his sword hilt. That was one word Sam remembered, and he understood the significance of the insult. Sam held his ground and stared into the Viking's blue-grey eyes. He'd be damned if he would show any fear in the face of a mere human, not after facing down the Devil himself.

"Normally we'd wait three days after the challenge is offered to stage the hólmganga, but we are not in Iceland now, so I've persuaded the engill Karlsfeni here that tomorrow would be a good day for a fight. Oh, and by the way, since clearly I am no match for such a fierce huge warrior as yourself, Karlsefni will fight you on my behalf."

Loki's grin was so feral, Sam wondered how he had ever thought for one second that this was Gabriel. It wasn't that he had many warm feelings for the Archangel. Even after Gabriel's change of heart, it was hard for Sam to shake off the trauma of Dean's manifold deaths, but at least Gabriel had always had a certain charm about him, that was utterly lacking in the Norse god.

Before the Vikings could drag Sam away, there was a disturbance at the back of the gathering. A young woman with a toddler balanced on her hip interrupted the proceedings, pushing her way through the men to tug at the leader's sleeve. _Karlsefni,_ Sam reminded himself. She was talking rapidly and urgently, and Sam could tell she was not happy with the answers Karlsefni was giving her.

Loki's sigh was loud and exaggerated.

"That is Gudrid, the engill Karlsefni's wife. Typical woman. She isn't happy he's agreed to the

hólmganga. Personally, I think she is over-estimating your abilities, no doubt based on your freakish height. Are you sure you are not related to the ice giants? No? Well, never mind. Gudrid's Karlsefni is very proficient with that axe of his, oh, and the sword of course. Hmmm. I wonder which weapon he will chose to chop those long legs of yours down to size?"

Sam thought about Dean, lost somewhere, unconscious and vulnerable in the depths of the forest. He wondered exactly how much information Loki had stolen from Kali, and whether the pagan god knew about the lethal qualities of the Taurus still tucked into his waistband, and said nothing.

:::

Nonosabawsut led a reluctant Dean to a low domed structure at the edge of the Beothuk camp, constructed of bent-over branches and covered in what looked like mud and grass. The old man gestured to a small dark opening and after a few seconds, Dean realised the gestures were indicating that this rabbit hole was actually a doorway, and he should somehow fold himself up to crawl inside.

He glanced pleadingly at Kiim, hoping for a get out, but she merely nodded and smiled encouragingly, so Dean got onto his hands and knees with some reluctance, and squeezed through the tiny entrance that was clearly designed for freaking midgets.

Inside the structure was larger than Dean had expected, and he could kneel upright, at least in the centre of the dome. It was dark and smelled of earth and wood-smoke and dead leaves. His eyes were slowly adjusting so that he could see when Nonosabawsut followed him inside. Kiim did not appear, so Dean assumed this was considered to be a man-thing. He hoped this wasn't a lead-in to some sort of _Man Named Horse_ proof of manhood initiation ceremony. He absently ran a hand over his chest. He kind of liked his perky nipples where they were, thanks very much.

Clearly Nonosabawsut was a man of few words, as he worked in silence to get a small fire going, lighting up the interior with a flickering orange ambience that made it look almost homely. Kind of like the inside of a badger's set, maybe. Or that beaver-house thing from those Narnia movies (not that he was admitting that he'd watched them, of course). Dean suppressed a giggle at the thought of a talking beaver squeezing in there with him and the ancient shaman. He hoped he wasn't getting hysterical, that would be embarrassing.

The old man seemed to be making a brew of some sort; he was boiling water in a clay pot, and periodically throwing in handfuls of a dull greenish-brown flaky powder from a leather pouch. Dean guessed it was too much to hope that this would contain alcohol. He'd kill for a shot or two of whiskey right now but he guessed this was just going to be some sort of herbal tea. The old man broke his silence to sing, a low rhythmic chant that in spite of Dean's impatience to be out of there and actively searching for Sam, he was starting to find soothing. The small space was getting a bit smoky so Dean hoped that the fire was just for the cooking part and the hut thing wasn't supposed to be a sweat lodge. He thought they might end up choking more than sweating at this rate.

After a few more minutes of chanting and stirring, it seemed that the potion was done. Nonosabawsut poured a couple of fingers of the murky liquid into another smaller clay pot, and after blowing on it a few times (Dean wasn't sure if this was part of the magic or just an unhygienic kind of courtesy) handed the drink to Dean. He scuffed earth onto the small fire, mostly extinguishing it, which at least cut down on the generation of smoke.

The old man mimed drinking and nodded encouragingly at Dean who was contemplating the opaque depths of his cup with some trepidation. It smelt pretty funky, as well as still being boiling hot. Dean pointed at the old man, then at the dubious drink and mimicked the same drinking gesture that had just been aimed at him.

"No offence buddy, but what about you joining me?"

Nonosabawsut shook his head emphatically, pointed two fingers at his own eyes then at Dean, a universal "watching you" sign. He waited a few seconds for Dean to get with the programme, then when Dean was slow to react he said something that sounded imperative.

"Oh fuck it." Dean closed his eyes and tipped the entire contents of the cup down his throat, figuring knocking it back like a shot of rot-gut was his best bet. He swallowed and coughed a little – that stuff tasted as awful as it had smelled. Nonosabawsut chuckled at the look of disgust that twisted Dean's face.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, chuckles. I don't see you rushing to take a swig of this stuff, and I can tell you it tastes like ass." The hunter leaned back against the concave wall and waited. Nonosabawsut was as good as his word (or in this case his gesture) and sat cross legged, staring at Dean until Dean started to think that this was what the old shaman had brought him here for – some sort of bizarre staring contest.

That was when the walls started to melt.

:::

The Vikings had decided to have a feast. Sam wasn't sure if they were celebrating his capture or merely looking forward to seeing his blood shed the next day. At the centre of the Vinlanders' settlement, nestling within its wooden palisade, was a miniature version of the great halls that Sam had seen depicted in his friend Josh's archaeology textbooks back in Stanford. This one was barely larger than Bobby's biggest car workshop, and some of the settlers had to sit outside, as the hall couldn't accommodate everyone. Fortunately, it was a mild summer night. Sam was wishing he'd been allowed to join the exiles from the hall round the bonfire they'd set a few paces from the entrance, as the interior was over-crowded, noisy and stuffy-hot.

engill Karlsefni had waved away the men who'd tried to bind Sam. It seemed there was some sort of honour-code about the hólmganga challenge having been flung down and accepted that had raised Sam's status from stranger to guest. In spite of that, for a brief moment Sam thought that he might have a chance to slip away unnoticed at some time during the night; but that was before the entire population of the settlement turned out to gawp at the tall stranger. At that point he realised the odds of him escaping were about as good as finding a fish riding a bicycle down Wall Street. Or an honest investment banker.

All he could do was hope that the Native Americans who had taken his brother into the forest harboured no ill will towards him and would take care of him. He hoped Dean hadn't been as badly hurt as it had appeared from a distance as he had no idea how well equipped people of the native tribes might be in treating injuries, this far back before recorded history.

There was no sign of Loki, and Sam took that as a good sign, as while the Trickster wasn't there he couldn't stir up any more trouble. He wondered where Loki might be hiding, and why, but was soon distracted from that little issue among the many by the start of the evening's entertainment.

Barrels of ale were rolled out, what looked like a half a cow was spitted and roasting on the central hearth, and Sam couldn't help thinking how Dean would probably have felt right at home here, as the night drew on and the carousing grew more chaotic and raucous. The entertainment consisted of one man after another standing up and bellowing what might have been some kind of bad singing or maybe poetry, it was hard to tell. At one point, two men stood on either side of the fire yelling back and forth, and Sam thought this might be _flyting_ (a kind of insult competition Josh had told him about), a guess which seemed to be borne out by the scuffle that broke out after one particularly heated exchange.

He couldn't fault the Vinlanders' hospitality, considering that he was effectively their prisoner, but he couldn't help wishing they had a more _modern_ sense of personal space as he was squeezed tight against a rough hewn wall on one side and several hairy, somewhat pungent men on the other. Not only was the hall crammed full of humanity, but the space (such as it was) was also being shared with several dogs, a handful of chickens and once Sam was sure he saw a sheep put its head through the doorway. His hands were kept busy with a constant traffic of drinking horns brimming with the most malty ale he'd ever tasted, lumps of hot greasy meat which he was expected to eat with only his fingers as his knife had been confiscated, and some warm crusty wholemeal bread which, he had to admit, tasted awesome.

In spite of his best intentions, and the hard wooden bench he was perched on, at some point during the early hours of the morning, the combination of the heat, the lack of fresh air and a stomach full of beer and food sent Sam into the deepest sleep he'd had for months, if not years.

And this far into the past, he was beyond the reach of Lucifer, even in his dreams.

:::

Dean had taken LSD once when he was nineteen. The rich college student he'd been fucking around with had offered him a tab, and he'd figured what the hell, he'd try anything once. This was nothing like the trip he'd had then. This was ten times, a hundred times weirder.

The earthen walls melted into a rainbow of colours that ran together then vanished like mist. He was sitting exposed to the air in a vast desert of red sand and rock, where gleaming silver fish swam through the clear blue air in the place of birds, and the sand sparkled like diamonds, dazzling him. The sun and moon were sharing the sky, both as bright as each other, and he could see stars dripping through his fingers when he cupped his hands over his eyes.

"Hey, Nosawbuttface whatsy'name, whatthefuck…" He mumbled as his body, suddenly boneless and melting like the walls, slipped sideways until he was half resting on his back, eyes open and his pupils blown, staring unseeing at the ceiling of the bothy.

Nonosabawsut gently lifted Dean's head and slid a pad of fur under it to make the stranger more comfortable for his spirit walking. Then he threw a handful of the dried moonflower onto the last embers of the fire, and inhaled the fragrant smoke deeply. It was time to follow the foreigner into the dreamscape, and see what spirit guides would honour his presence.

:::

Sam woke up on the earthen floor with the mother of all headaches and a dog's tongue slobbering over his face, seeking after the gravy and grease that smeared the day old stubble on Sam's chin. He spluttered and tried to shove the hound away only to find that there was a rather large and smelly Viking lying on his arm, which had gone to sleep under the pressure almost as soundly as the snoring Viking.

After some wriggling and shoving of dead weight around, Sam managed to extricate himself from the heap of humanity and sit up. He was conscious that his hair must be standing on end, his breath probably smelled foul as Dean's after an all-night binge, and that he had probably never had a more urgent need to take a leak in his entire life. Fortunately for Sam, precedence was already being set in that department. As he looked around the hall, there was the engill Karlsefni himself, relieving his bladder into the central fire-place.

"Well, if he doesn't care about pissing inside his own house…" Sam muttered as he staggered to his feet and joined the engill in anointing the burning embers, heaving a huge sign of relief. He felt the engill's curious gaze as he tucked himself away and zipped up his jeans, and the memory of the previous day and the impending hólmganga came rushing back. He turned reluctantly to look at the Viking chief, half expecting the guy to start whaling on him right away, and was surprised to find a smile greeting him.

Really, this wasn't going to make fighting this man any easier, him being so freaking friendly. Or so freaking huge. Sam didn't have to look down too far to meet the engill's eyes, and the guy was all muscle underneath that wolfskin cloak he wore. The Vinlanders' leader might be a farmer first but he was also a warrior. All Vikings were warriors after all. When they needed to be.

Karlsefni said something and clapped Sam on the shoulder. Sam grimaced a smile in response, the best he could do in the circumstances. He had a moment of regret that he was going to have to take this man out, one way or another, but he had to find Dean, and they had to find a way home.

Loki appeared out of nowhere, virtually tucked up under Karlsefni's elbow, making both Sam and the engill start.

"Nice to see you boys getting acquainted," Loki crooned, smiling slyly in response to Sam's death glare. He flung an arm around each of the big men, laughing when Sam tried in vain to pull away in disgust. Loki might inhabit a small man's shape, but he was still a god, and was a lot stronger than he appeared. There was no way Sam was breaking free of that grip unless Loki wanted him to.

Karlsefni said something again, that sounded like a question, and Loki sighed dramatically.

He danced free of the two humans and stood in front of them, arms crossed.

"Do you know something? I'm getting a little tired of acting as your interpreter. Why don't I do something about that language barrier and maybe you two can entertain me with some witty flyting before Karlsefni kills you, eh?"

Loki snapped his fingers. Sam glared at the small god, arms folded in an attempt to control himself. The temptation to take a swing at that smug face was almost overwhelming.

"I don't know how I could ever have mistaken you for Gabriel. He might have been a dick at times, but he never pouted like a girl."

Loki's expression took on a dangerous cast and Sam wondered if Loki was going to try and smite him or something, when suddenly Karlsefni's laugh broke the tension. The engill clapped Sam on the back again, nearly sending him staggering.

"So you do speak our tongue then, stranger. We had been wondering why you did not, and my wife was afraid that you were not right in the head. I would have hated to have been forced to fight a fool. There would be no honour in killing an dullard."

"Um, right, thanks. I think." Sam hesitated, avoiding looking at Loki's mocking face. "Look, you know I never said anything bad about anyone here – well apart from Loki, of course. So there's not really anything for us to be fighting over, you know?"

"Perhaps that is true, but the challenge has been made and accepted now, and as true warriors we cannot walk away and still hold our heads up high." Karlsefni sounded regretful.

Sam didn't think he really cared much any more about holding his head high, having managed to set Lucifer free and start the Apocalypse on the back of misplaced overconfidence, but he wasn't going to tell the Viking leader that.

"I don't want to kill you." Sam said, trying one more time, but the engill just clasped his shoulder and smiled.

"Nor I you, but the hide is spread, and at noon we will fight."

"This is very touching. I am moved to see such brotherly bonding between you two. I am sure it will break my heart to watch one of you spitted on the other's spear, but…" Loki gave an exaggerated sigh. "I'm sure I'll get over it eventually."

Sam turned on the Norse Trickster, a hot wave of anger washing over him.

"You self-centred, manipulative bastard, you are really getting a kick out of this, aren't you? Don't you realise while you keep me and my brother trapped here in the past, back in the future the world is being torn apart by Lucifer and the angels?"

Loki spread his hands in a universal gesture of '_do I care?_'.

"Your goddess Kali saw fit to send this _anachronism_ back where I belong, why should I worry what happens in the future?"

"Firstly, she's not _my goddess_. And secondly, are you telling me it doesn't bother you to know a thousand years from now Lucifer is slaughtering the complete pantheon of pagan gods, Asgard included? Baldr and Odin are dead, and he won't stop there."

"And yet somehow you survived, my brother?" The deep voiced query came from behind Sam's shoulder, causing both Sam and Karlsefni to jump, while Loki's face acquired the most ridiculously sulky expression ever seen on a grown man. Or grown god for that matter.

Sam's jaw dropped as he spun round and took in the outlandish new arrival, and it seemed Karlsefni was having a similar reaction. The voice emanated from a striking figure who was taller than either of the two humans and outshone the weak sun with the splendour of his armour. But Sam's gaze had gotten stuck on the weapon the gleaming newcomer was cradling in his arms more tenderly than a baby. It appeared to be a huge squared-off hammer.

"Holy shit," Sam blurted without thinking. "You look like Thor."

:::

Dean wasn't sure what was expected of him in this drugged up dream, so he walked. Desert and all that crazy Lucy in the sky with diamonds stuff had quickly given way to a softer, more domesticated landscape that he half recognised. He was surrounded by woods and gravelled paths that looked like they were part of a National Park or similar tamed wilderness. Part of his consciousness retained the fact that he was hallucinating, but this was lodged somewhere deep in his brain where most of the time it couldn't bother him. Everything else was telling him this was real, and that this was his chance to find Sam and go home.

He had been walking for several minutes before he became aware that a presence was shadowing his every step. Beside him he could hear the click, click, click of claws on the pebbled path and a soft panting. For once his first thought wasn't _black dog_, or even _hell hound_. He felt no anxiety or fear as he turned his head to check out the creature following him, and wasn't surprised to find a grey wolf padding its way along, half a step behind him. The wolf stopped when he did, and cocked its head. Its eyes were a deeply piercing blue against the dark rings of black around its sockets, striking amidst its ruff of pale grey fur. It was a handsome beast, standing taller than Dean's waist, heavy and solid.

Dean moved without thought, stretched out a hand and buried his fingers deep in the wolf's warm pelt, never doubting it would be allowed. He scratched behind the wolf's ears as if it was an old family friend, as if the dream-wolf was Rumsfeld. Or Bones. Remembering Sam's stray dog from Flagstaff jerked Dean's chain like nothing else probably could, and the wolf growled low in its throat in response to his sudden agitation.

"He's your guide." A voice said and Dean whirled around, a knife in his hand quicker than thinking. The wolf merely sat down at his feet, alert but calm, ears pricked.

A young man stood in the shade of the trees, on the edge of the path. His hands were empty, relaxed by his sides, but Dean had seen too much to trust that empty hands equalled harmless, even in a vision. Neither was he willing to just take it on face value that this man was what he seemed to be – an Indian (_It's Native American, Dean_, corrected Sam's voice inside his head), dressed like the people who'd taken him in and tended his cracked skull. Remembering his injury, Dean's hand went to his head expecting to find a bandage or something, and was slightly puzzled to find his scalp smooth and unbroken. Had he been here longer than he'd thought? Or was someone messing with his mind? He'd momentarily forgotten how he'd come to be here and the loss of memory scared him into anger.

"Oh yeah? And who are you then?" he challenged, not letting the knife waver. He was obscurely comforted when the wolf moved close into his side, its presence warm against his leg. A breeze ruffled its fur and caressed the short hairs on the back of Dean's neck.

"I'm Nonosabawsut of the Beothuk." The young man said. Dean scoffed.

"Nonosabawsut is an old man, you can't be him."

"This is how I move through the spirit realm, clothed in the memory of my youth."

Dean stared at the boyishly smooth skin, the earnest dark brown eyes. He thought perhaps he could see vestiges of the old man he'd just met, but then again, it could just be wishful thinking. Then he sighed. Did it really matter? He had a spirit wolf sitting on his foot and leaning on his leg like a soppy Labrador, and no idea where (or when) he was. What difference did it make if this was Nonosabawsut the freaking Indian or not?

He sighed. Might as well be polite about this, again. At least this time they seemed to be speaking the same language.

"Dean Winchester," he said, completing the introductions.

"What is it that you seek, Dean Winchester?" The young Nonosabawsut asked. At last, an easy question with an easy answer.

"My brother, Sam." Dean said. Always Sam.

"This is your dream walk, Dean. Where does the dream say that you need to go to find your Sam?"

Dean looked around again, not sure what he was expecting to see. Then he remembered how it had worked in Heaven. Maybe it would be the same here, in this vision.

"I think I need to find a road." He said, and shoving the wolf with his knee to dislodge it, started off down the path again.

"Well you don't look much like Toto," he murmured to the wolf, who pricked up his ears again at the sound of Dean's voice, "And sure as hell I ain't Dorothy, but a Yellow Brick Road to take us home wouldn't hurt."

Home. The concept was lodged in his heart, even though his head always told everyone they didn't have a home.

When he crested the rise of a gentle slope he didn't find it strange that there, stretched out in front of him, was a long straight road. He didn't look back to see if Nonosabawsut was following. He was too busy fighting the lift of his spirits when he recognised the dark gleam of the Impala waiting for him on the smooth blacktop, and leaning against her passenger door, a figure he knew better than his own face in the mirror.

"Hey Dean," Sam said.

Dean opened the car door and slid into the driver's seat. Yeah, this was home. He half expected to wake up then and there, after all, he'd succeeded in his vision quest. He'd found Sam so the dream should be over, shouldn't it? Wasn't that how these things worked? He looked over his shoulder. Toto (yeah, Dean was going to run with that. A dog – wolf, whatever – shouldn't be without a name, right?) sat in the backseat of the Impala, ice-pale blue eyes staring at him, pink tongue sticking out as he panted in the growing heat. Nonosabawsut sat next to the wolf, seemingly as inclined to infinite patience and trust in his waiting around for something to happen as was Dean's new canine friend. In the way of dreams, Dean had no idea how his two exotic companions had managed to get into the car.

Dean supposed this was all no stranger for his baby than having an angel and a demon side by side on the backseat. Or a pagan goddess for that matter. That thought felt like déjà vu. Sam's grin distracted him before the memory of the missing Castiel or the late unlamented Ruby could bring his mood down, or the vague spectre of Kali could disturb him, and he couldn't help grinning back. Dean turned the key in the ignition. Putting his foot down on the gas, he listened to his baby roar.

"Where to, Sammy? Any ideas what we have to do to get out of here?"

"I don't know Dean. Just drive, eh? Let's see where we end up."

Dean drove.

:::

It didn't take long, a few minutes, maybe, for Dean to conclude that this Sam wasn't the real Sam, and only a few more minutes more to puzzle over the fact that Sam not actually being Sam was more annoying than disturbing. When Dean raised the issue of his lack of substance, Dream Sam managed a passable bitch face, but Dean could see the edges wavering, as if solid matter was made of translucent cellophane, painted over with a Sam-like picture.

"Christ, my imagination sucks." He said in disgust, glancing in the rear-view mirror at his other passengers. "You'd have thought I could have dreamed up a couple of busty Asian beauties instead of a smelly dog, an escapee from the Wild West and a Sam who doesn't know any more about what is going on here than I do."

Toto was resting his head on the edge of the open window, tongue out, tasting the air, ignoring Dean and enjoying the ride. The young Nonosabawsut seemed to be taking this modern mode of transport in his stride, which made Dean wonder if the Native American too was simply a construct of his own mind. Though why his brain would introduce into this messed up scenario a younger version of an old shaman he'd only met five minutes ago, Dean had no clue. He gave it up and turned to check out Toto.

"Huh. For a spirit guide, you don't do much by way of guiding," he said to the wolf, feeling somewhat aggrieved. "Guess I'll just have to find our way out of here on my own then."

Dream Sam just smiled, leaned back in the seat and stretched his long legs out as best he could. In disgust, Dean flipped a tape into the deck and turned the volume up loud. It didn't seem like there was going to be much chatting going on, and besides, what was the point of trying to strike up a conversation with people who were merely aspects of your own psyche? He'd just be talking to himself.

The landscape was changing, the forest giving way to wide flat grasslands that reminded Dean of Kansas, or Iowa, where the wide-open sky dominated everything with its vast expanse of cerulean blue. It was like the Mid-West, except where it wasn't. This land had no sign of people. No big square fields of corn, no pylons or telegraph poles, no wind farms, no buildings. The only signs of humanity were the Impala and the straight smooth blacktop with its totally redundant centre yellow line; redundant because it looked like he could drive for eternity and there would never be another vehicle sharing this piece of road.

It was lonely, and so empty that the words of Zeppelin's Kashmir booming from the speakers were too close for comfort. He was getting heartily sick of being an unwilling traveller in both time and space. Dean leaned across and switched the tape off, then thought that maybe the ensuing silence might be worse.

For some unknown reason, the dreamlike quality of this journey was fading, and Dean's short term memories were starting to reassert themselves. With them was a growing sense of urgency.

"Hey, Nono, I don't suppose you know where the real Sam is?"

"Now that I have seen this Sam, I think that the very tall man who chased Kiim into the forest may have been your brother." The young shaman replied.

Dean slammed on the brakes, sending Dream Sam flying into the dash with a muffled shout of protest and a faded echo of the emergency stop that had ultimately brought them here. Toto growled his disapproval but Dean was oblivious. He flung open the car door and scrambled out. Nonosabawsut exited the Impala, followed by Toto and Dream Sam, who was rubbing his sore arm and looking dishevelled.

"Son of a bitch!" Dean yelled at the empty sky, before rounding on Nonosabawsut. "Are you telling me you've known where Sam is all this time and only just thought to tell me? Why are we even still fucking here?"

He grabbed the young man's arms as if he could shake the answer out of him. However, whatever Nonosabawsut might have said in reply to the irate Winchester was swallowed up in an almighty clap of thunder. Out of nowhere, lowering storm clouds had gathered on the horizon, and the vague outline of mountains Dean had been driving towards moments before were lost under the heavy pall. Behind them to the east, the sun still shone, lighting the foreground in extra vivid colour against the dark grey backdrop.

And where the road was swallowed up by the advancing curtain of rain was the largest, brightest rainbow Dean had ever witnessed. Not only was it large and bright but utterly impossible, as it wasn't bowed but perfectly straight, and seemed to rise up into the sky in a colourful flat ribbon-like continuation of the road itself. Dean's hands dropped to his sides as he gaped in astonishment.

Beside him, almost forgotten, Nonosabawsut seemed equally awed, if a little more articulate.

"Remarkable. I have never seen such a thing."

Dean rubbed at his forehead unconsciously as the atmosphere seemed to grow denser and the pressure build up behind the bank of dark grey clouds was replicated inside his head. A trickle of sweat ran down his face and he ran a finger round his shirt collar that suddenly felt too tight.

A jagged line of lightning tore across the clouds closely followed by another deep rumble of thunder. Distracted by the coming storm, it was a few moments before either man noticed something dark and possibly man-shaped was moving on the surface of the rainbow.

As the figure reached the junction between the shimmering rainbow and the dull surface of the tarmac, it became more distinct. Dean's eyes widened. He knew this was a dream but this was ridiculous.

"You have gotta be kidding me!"

"Your dreams are very interesting, Dean Winchester." Nonosabawsut remarked.

"You could say that." Dean swallowed.

Dean wondered if it was a good sign that Toto didn't growl, though truth be told, he was too busy freaking out to take much notice of anything but the armour-clad vision coming towards them.

"Fascinating! I do not know how this is possible, but this person is real, he is not part of your dreaming," the Beothuk added, almost as an afterthought, but before Dean could react to that bombshell, the new arrival had halted a few steps in front of them, legs akimbo.

The huge man sported a red beard divided into two plaits and long red hair worn loose in dramatically flowing locks. He was resplendent in armour that looked as though it had been liberated from a Lord of the Rings movie set, and his head was crowned by a helmet Dean thought looked familiar from one of Bobby's books about ancient artifacts, except this one was gleaming and new, its cheek and helm panels chip carved with war-like scenes, and the crest topped by a stylised wild boar. (No wings; if Dean hadn't been so generally gobsmacked he would have been disappointed). The figure shone like the sun with all his burnished steel, silver, gold and garnets.

The crowning glory of the newcomer's outfit, however, was the dull steely-grey and very large hammer he held in his right hand. The least gaudy item somehow drew the eye with its promise of a power barely held in check, straining to be unleashed.

Dean couldn't resist it.

"So. Thor, eh? Where are the rest of your Avenger buddies?"

Thor looked blank and tilted his head in a painfully familiar way.

"Forgive me, stranger, but I do not understand that reference."

Dean swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat at the reminder of another friend gone missing from the fray.

"Never mind," he said. He refused to go there right now, if ever.

"What brings four such mismatched companions to the foot of Bifrost, and why were you calling to me?" Thor asked.

Dean looked down at Nonosabawsut and the wolf, but the Beothuk just shrugged as if to say _this is your dream, son, if there was any calling going on it was down to you_. Great. He dreaded to think what is said for the state of his mind that he was sending dream summonses to giant comic book characters. With long bright red hair and beards.

He cleared his throat. _Come on Winchester_. He'd survived Hell, shot Lucifer, and killed an angel while armed with nothing but a silver spike. He could cope with talking to a crazy vision of a Viking god.

"I'm Dean Winchester, this is Nonosabawsut of the Beothuk and the wolf is Toto. I am looking for my brother because we need to get back to our own time so that we can stop the Apocalypse." Dean flapped a dismissive hand at Dream Sam. "This is a copy of my brother I dreamed up. The real Sam is even more annoying."

"Hey!" Dream Sam protested, then rapidly deflated into silence when nobody paid him any attention.

Thor gave Dean a considering look.

"Your time?"

"Yes. I – we - my brother and me, got blasted back in time by the goddess Kali. I think it was an accident, really. She was aiming at the archangel Gabriel. Or at least at the thing that looked like Gabriel." Dean would have explained further but Thor shook his head, silencing him with a glance.

"This apocalypse. It is not Ragnarok?"

"No. This is Lucifer fighting against God's angels who are led by his brother Michael, and any other gods that get in the way are being taken out, one by one. Lucifer means to destroy humanity, cleanse the earth."

"And you and your brother; how are you, mere mortals, going to stop this?"

Dean shifted uncomfortably. Here in the past, these ancient gods were closer to their followers and were therefore ten, no, a thousand times more powerful than any of the gods he'd faced only hours ago and a thousand years hence. The thought was making his skin itch. Yet this could be his chance to gain a formidable ally, and he wished more than ever that it was the real Sam standing by his side instead of a useless dream construct. His little brother would know exactly what to say to get the Viking god on their side. Fuck it, he'd just have to make do with his own words and hope for the best.

"In a nutshell, angels need strong and willing vessels, and Archangels need even stronger ones. Sam and I were marked down to be meat suits for Michael and Lucifer, and apparently they need us to fight each other here on earth. Well, they need Sam anyhow. I think Michael has decided to go with alternative arrangements, and take our other brother Adam instead of me.

Which means Sam has to keep saying no to Lucifer while we find the rings of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Once we have the rings we have the weapon we need to stop this thing."

"What would happen if you could not return home?"

_Good question_, Dean thought. He hesitated a moment before answering.

"Honestly? I don't know. But one thing's for sure, it would be very bad for us 'mere mortals'. Lucifer without Sam as his vessel might lose in a fight with Michael, but none of those douchebag angels care about mankind any more. They just want to crush us mud-monkeys into the ground, make the earth some sort of empty echo of their crappy Heaven. And if Lucifer wins, he will wipe humanity off the face of the planet because he hates us worse than he hates the angels. Either way, all we can look forward to is war, death, disease and extinction."

Thor was silent for a moment, absently tapping his fingers against Mjölnir. Behind him, there was a low grumble of thunder in response.

"And where stands Asgard in this battle?"

"Lucifer just killed Odin and Baldur, and I can't see Michael negotiating with pagans, so I don't know. I guess you old gods are on your own against the rest."

Thor's grip on his hammer tightened until Dean could see his knuckles whiten, and coruscations of blue-white light gathered around the squared off head. The Viking god was frowning and the thunder in the background grew louder and more ominous, clearly echoing the Norse god's worsening mood.

"So in the future this Lucifer has killed my father?" Thor didn't wait for Dean's nod before continuing. "In the Northlands across the ocean the servants of the White Christ grow stronger and more numerous every day. Already Asgard is weaker, less potent than it was but ten or twenty years ago. I have heard stories from the White Christ's book; I know of these creatures of which you speak – these angels and the nameless god they serve. I have pleaded with the All Father to take whatever steps we can to survive, but he does not see the danger."

Dean could feel the air like a solid thing, close and hot against his skin. He wiped a hand over his forehead as warm liquid ran down his face and back, his shirt sticking to him. It was getting hard to breathe, and Toto had started to growl his disapproval in a low counterpoint to the continuing rumble of thunder Thor's anger was generating. Dean could feel the growing pressure inside his head, rationalised it as the effects of the concussion headache leaching through into this drug induced dream. He tried to swallow but his mouth was drier than the desert they had walked through to get here.

"Tell me about this Gabriel who came back to this time with you and your brother." Thor demanded.

Dean coughed and swayed slightly, his legs trembling. What the fuck was wrong with him? He was relieved and grateful when Toto nudged closer to him, and he grasped a fistful of the large wolf's fur to steady himself. He could see Nonosabawsut looking up at him with a concerned expression, but he figured it was expedient to concentrate on the angry Thunder god right now, just in case he hadn't totally cocked up their chance of getting Thor on their side.

"I don't think it was the Archangel Gabriel who Kali attacked, I think it was someone who looked like him, but I don't know who it was."

"Describe this person."

"He's kinda short, got shaggy brown hair, brown eyes and a long face…"

Thor made a gesture with his hammer and the lightnings that had been coalescing spun off into the air and hung there. Thor flicked his wrist and for a few seconds, the light gathered into a form that Dean recognised.

"Is this he?"

"Yeah."

A strange expression crossed the Viking god's face – a mixture of sadness, exasperation, fear and fondness – all there and gone so quickly Dean was hard pressed to name them. Thor raised Mjölnir above his head and gave Dean one last look before he called down the lightning from the skies.

"I will find your brother, Dean Winchester, and return him to you. Farewell."

Lightning completely enveloped the Norse god, so bright that Dean and Nonosabawsut were forced to cover their eyes. _Just like an angel's grace_, Dean thought. When they dared to open them again, the god was gone and Dean had other things to worry about.

Like his too rapidly racing heart and inability to breathe, for one. He was burning up like he had a fever, and his face and shirt were soaking wet, though his mouth felt desert-dry and he had a thirst that raged like a bushfire in his throat.

"What's goin' on? What's happening to me?" He croaked, sinking to his hands and knees as his wobbly legs had decided they would no longer support him. The drips that fell onto the ground beneath his outspread hands were viscous and red; not sweat at all but blood.

"You are reacting badly to the moonflower draft. I need to wake you immediately."

Nonosabawsut said, and Dean didn't like the note of anxiety he detected in the Beothuk holy man's voice, nor the fact that Toto was whining.

"No shit Sherlock," he grunted, as the ground came up to greet him like an old friend.

* * *

_A/N Hope you are still enjoying this little tale, the final chapter will be up at the end of the week!_


	4. Chapter 4

And here we are, the last part!

* * *

**Chapter 4**

When Thor arrived at the Vinlanders' settlement, he wasn't surprised to find the village in uproar. The agitation that was rising from within the wooden stockade was palpable even from a distance, and Thor could see people rushing to and fro as if the place were an ants' nest that a careless child had stirred with a stick.

And when he strode into the midst of the turmoil, he immediately found the wielder of the stick. As he had suspected from the moment that he heard Dean Winchester's description, it was the ever-devious Loki who was at the root of all the chaos.

Focused on his little brother, he barely noticed the tall, shaggy haired man saying in the too loud tones of the truly shocked "Holy shit! You look like Thor."

"Well met, little brother." Thor said.

"That's because he _is_ Thor." Loki snapped at the tall man, who Thor now recognised as man he had promised to find, Sam Winchester. Loki sounded caught somewhere between impatience and fully blown anger as he turned from the still open mouthed mortals and faced the Thunder god. "And I am not your brother," Loki spat out. He seemed to gain a certain amount of satisfaction from the hurt expression that flitted briefly over Thor's face.

Thor ruthlessly quashed his emotions and grasped Loki by the shoulder. .

"We need to talk." Thor said. He locked gazes with Sam briefly and took the time to tell the young man 'I'll be back' Terminator-style before the two gods vanished in less than the blink of an eye. Karlsefni and the Viking settlers let out a collective gasp. Sam merely gave a mental shrug. He was becoming almost blasé about the comings and goings of supernatural beings, and was more concerned at this stage about what on earth he was supposed to do next. He just hoped that Loki's babel-fish solution to the lack of a common language would continue to function in the absence of the god.

:::

Loki pulled away and rounded on Thor as soon as they re-materialised at the foot of the rainbow bridge to Asgard. Thor was already talking, but Loki didn't want to hear anything his so-called brother might have to say.

"Brother, I need your help. We must return the Winchester brothers to their own time so they can stop their Apocalypse…" Thor attempted to pre-empt his little brother who had his mouth open, ready to launch into a tirade, but the outraged Loki was having none of it.

"How dare you drag me here! I was enjoying myself for the first time in an unconscionably long time and you rip me away to _talk_? All those centuries I was chained up and suffering and never once did you seek me out to free me or even offer comfort, yet _now_ you want to have a conversation about some pathetic mortals?"

Whatever else Thor had been going to say was lost between brain and tongue as he tried to absorb what Loki had said.

"What?" he blurted.

"What? Is that all you can say? More than one thousand years I was bound, poison eating into my skin and only Sigyn cared enough about me to bring her bowl and catch the acid drips to stop the pain and even she deserted me in the end…oof!" Loki's rant was brought to an abrupt stop by Thor grabbing his arm and shaking all the breath out of him. Thor's face was almost as red as his hair as he shouted at Loki. Thunder grumbled in the background.

"What are you talking about? I left you lounging around the gleaming halls of Asgard only ten days ago, when last I returned from seeking out Odin here on Midgard. You were fine, no chains, no dripping poison – what nonsense is this?"

Loki staggered backwards as Thor released his grip. He took a steadying breath.

"I was in Asgard but ten days ago?"

Thor opened his mouth but snapped it shut again as Loki's hand went up. "Wait. Let me think." Loki commanded, but it was the note of bewilderment in his voice that made Thor acquiesce and remain silent.

"Of course I was there. Because that must have been Gabriel, sitting in my place, eating my food, quaffing from my drinking horn…and I – I am even now bound and trapped in that cavern, being tormented and tortured…with only my faithful wife Sigyn to alleviate the agonies I was suffering…am suffering as we speak."

"I don't understand." Thor said. So Loki explained. How the Archangel named Gabriel had come to him one day, all smiles and jollity, offering fun and friendship. How similar he had thought this wayward angel was, a kindred spirit even, ready to join in his delightfully vicious pranks until one day Loki had confided in Gabriel his hatred of and plans for Odin's favourite son, the beautiful Baldr. That must have been when Gabriel had twisted reality and stolen Loki's life from him, clearly intending to trap him forever.

Bewilderment was replaced by fury as realisation dawned on Loki of the true extent of Gabriel's trickery. Loki's edges wavered as he prepared to shift his shape but he was forestalled when Thor grabbed the Trickster god's arm again, arresting his attempted metamorphosis.

"What are you doing, brother? You cannot rescue yourself from something that has already happened."

"Take your hands off me!" Loki hissed, brown eyes glinting dark and his pale face flushed red. Thor allowed his foster brother to wrench free, raising both hands placatingly. Loki took two strides away from Thor, the tension visible in every line of his body.

"Think about it, Loki. You have returned from a future that has already taken place, what would happen to _you_ now if someone changes even one small detail in what is effectively your own past?"

Loki faltered at Thor's words, and came to a halt. The Thunder god might appear to be all brawn and no brain but Loki was well aware that many had come unstuck through underestimating Thor's intelligence because of his appearance. Loki stood stiffly to attention for a few seconds; and then his shoulders slumped.

"So what am I to do then? Just leave myself there to suffer all over again? The pain and the abandonment…"

Thor moved closer, until he was standing right close behind his smaller, slighter brother, forming a solid wall of warmth at Loki's back. He thought better of offering Loki a comforting touch, though, satisfying himself with words.

"Let it go, little brother. I don't want to see you disappear, or worse, through trying to right a wrong that cannot be righted."

Loki drew himself up, turned around to face the Thunder god.

"Calling me _little brother_ doesn't make it any more true, you know."

"You are my brother in every way that matters."

"Except for blood. That matters, Thor."

"Not to me."

Thor wasn't pleased to see the all too familiar sly expression back on Loki's face and braced himself for the lies he knew were coming.

"You do know that in the future, those Winchesters are the cause of the death of your father? Why would you want to help them return to finish wreaking the havoc they started? Perhaps you want to take the All Father's place and are happy to have these mortal lapdogs do your dirty work for you. Or mayhap you are just too stupid to understand how devious and dangerous these brothers can be."

Thor clenched his fists around Mjolnir's shaft and gritted his teeth. He could see the glee in Loki's eyes as the blue-white lightnings gathered around the hammer's head, but he refused to be drawn into Loki's petty games. There was too much at stake here to allow his little brother's maliciousness to distract him now.

Somehow, he had to persuade his embittered Trickster sibling that it was in both their interests to send these time-travelling mortals home. Because Thor had smelled the changes in the air; he had felt the gradual weakening of Asgard's influence on the Northmen and with it the chilling threat of an ignominious, lonely and above all _dishonourable_ death for him and his fellow gods – and Thor thought that here, on this extraordinary and vast continent, he might have found a solution, thanks to the strange compulsion that had drawn him to answer the unconscious call of Dean Winchester's dreaming.

:::

Sam watched as Karlsefni stripped down to his breeches, which were held up by a broad band of linen strips cinched with a thick leather belt that would afford the soft vulnerable parts of his stomach with an extra layer of protection. Sam's jeans and narrow belt looked miserably inadequate in comparison as he shucked off his layers of shirts, the goosebumps on his bare skin only partially due to the cool breeze. This was not the kind of fighting Sam was used to, or the kind of opponent either. Karlsefni was just a guy, not a monster, and he seemed like a good guy too, so trying in cold blood to kill or maim him went totally against the grain. Although the thought had crossed Sam's mind, he couldn't bring himself to pull an Indiana Jones move and simply shoot the man to get this over with quickly. He had already hidden the Taurus in his jacket, and he now carefully placed his shirts on top of the pile at the edge of the roped off area, to remove the temptation to introduce a further anachronism to their situation by using the firearm.

Physically, the pair looked to be fairly evenly matched. Sam was taller, but slimmer in the hips; Karlsefni was stockier, but his muscles equally well defined, corded hard from a lifetime of farming and fighting. This would be no walk over for either man, but even so, Sam felt he had the edge.

Sam's mouth set in a grim line as he stepped onto the traditional staked out cows hide that was to set the boundaries of their fight. One thing his time with Ruby had taught him was how to be merciless. With Dean gone, it had been simple vengeance that he had been seeking with single-minded intent. Now he faced the responsibility of deciding his brother's fate and maybe the fate of humankind, albeit hundreds of years in the future – the future that he intended denying the young Viking leader. These stakes were too high for Sam to feel any compassion or compunction. Sam predicted that this ability to be ruthless would be where he had the advantage over the Viking leader, who was clearly brave, but seemed too warm-hearted and generous to strike the kind of low blow necessary to finish this. The rules of the hólmganga were unambiguous – only one opponent could walk off the hide – death or incapacitation was the aim.

He dropped into a fighting crouch, the long knife he had chosen from the offered weapons gripped loosely in his right hand. Karlsefni briefly whirled his long sword like a showman, making the steel glisten in the sunlight. Sam thought the sword was a mistake in such a small, restricted space. Though he wasn't going to underestimate the Viking's skill with it, he was happy that the Viking had chosen the sword instead of the axe. He was counting on Karlsefni's confidence in the sword's longer reach would discourage the Viking leader from contemplating the option of close and dirty hand to hand fighting that Sam had in mind until it was too late.

Neither man wasted any breath in posturing, and it was the engill who made the first move.

Holy shit, but the man was fast. Sam barely had time to side step the first sweep of the sword before Karlsefni was following it up with a second and third. The long sword was made to be a slashing weapon, not for quick rapier thrusts, but the large Viking was even more skilful than Sam had anticipated, and had him breathing hard within minutes. He needed to get in close, inside the sword's reach, but the engill was using every inch of that pattern-welded steel to frustrate Sam's efforts. There was a cheer from the crowd as their leader's blade scored a red line in Sam's upper arm, causing the young hunter to hiss with pain.

In his head was a running commentary that was a weird mixture of swearing from Dean and instruction from Dad and quotes from freaking Shakespeare…a hit, a palpable hit. No way was Sam taking Laertes' part here, though. Hamlet neither. He felt the warm blood running down his arm and bared his teeth in a manic grin.

Sam feinted, tried a move Dean had taught him a long time ago when he was still shorter and slighter than his big brother and it worked. He was there, inside Karlsefni's guard and chest to chest with the Viking who teetered, straining to keep his balance. Now the advantage was with Sam and he could see from the glint in Karlsefni's eye that he knew it too. Two layers of naked sweat-slick skin slid together as Sam's chest pressed against Karlsfeni's. Sam could feel the thud of the Viking's heart against his rib cage, melding with his own heartbeat. It was strangely intimate. Sam's thigh pushed between Karlsefni's legs as he sought to hook an ankle and bring the big man down. Sam's hand gripped Karlsefni's wrist, twisting until the Viking had to release his sword or feel his bones crack.

Neither man heard the dull thud as the sword dropped to the ground, or the collective intake of breath from the onlookers. Their world had narrowed to the flex and strain of muscle, the harsh sound of their own breathing and the blood pumping fierce in their heads, the desperate need to find that one chink, that weakness that would give one of them the upper hand.

Perhaps if Karlsefni had matched his strength against Sam when the engill had been a younger man, without a woman and a young child to distract him, then he might have prevailed.

If Sam had lived through this fight before – before he'd died and killed a man in cold blood; before he'd had to watch helpless while his brother was torn apart in front of him; before he'd spent months drinking demon blood and forging himself into a weapon; before he'd stepped so far over the line that broke that last seal; before Lucifer had taken up semi-permanent residence in his dreams – perhaps compassion would have stayed his hand when the engill's wife screamed out her protest, and he would have hesitated to bring his knife round to press its sharp point against the Viking leader's side where he had Karlsefni bent backwards over his knee.

Perhaps.

:::

Nonosabawsut came out of the moonflower haze with a swiftness that was tribute to much practice and to the smaller amounts of the herb used by the guardian role, and immediately crawled across to where the stranger lay. The old man swore quietly under his breath when he saw Dean's condition. He was always very careful when measuring out the doses of the potent medicine, but infrequently a brave would react badly, and it appeared that this was once of those occasions.

Dean's open eyes were very dark, the unusual hazel of his irises nearly totally eclipsed by the black of the pupils, his unseeing gaze skittering around, never settling. His face was flushed and though he glowed as hot as the still smouldering embers of the fire, his skin was dry to the touch. Nonosabawsut was happy to see that at least the blood that had covered the young man in his dreaming had not been real. Even though he had known it was part of Dean's dreaming, the image had been very vivid and hard to shake off.

"Young man, you have a very powerful mind." He muttered as he shuffled his body round in the cramped space of the spirit lodge in order to position himself at Dean's head. He spent a few fruitless moments trying to drag the large man closer to the lodge's exit before giving up in frustration. He was going to need help to shift the stranger where he could see to treat him properly.

He crawled out of the lodge, still pondering what he had seen in the stranger's vision. It had been no surprise to meet Dean's spirit guide, that was to be expected, but the Beothuk holy man had never encountered a real live god when visiting the spirit realm, let alone the Thunder god in person.

The old man watched as the three young braves he'd commandeered struggled to manoeuvre the bulky stranger out into the daylight. Kiim came and stood by his side.

"What happened?" she asked.

"I will have to tell you later. First I need to wake him up, then try and get him to walk off the effects of the potion. He has the moon fever and I am not sure yet how bad it is."

Kiim's little gasp of concern followed Nonosabawsut as he approached the lodge. The three young men had managed to sit Dean up, though his head was lolling on his shoulders like a girl-child's doll. Nonosabawsut slapped the stranger hard across the face, shocking him into confused wakefulness.

"Get him on his feet," the old man ordered. He was still feeling the after effects of the drug himself, but years of use meant his body tolerated it much better, and he could shake it off much more quickly. He still remembered his first few times though, so waited anxiously as Esiban and his two companions hauled the weakly protesting stranger to his feet. Nonosabawsut had seen a few severe reactions before, and he knew several treatments they could try, but sometimes just getting them awake and walking around could work the toxins out of their system, so he'd rather try that first before resorting to sedation or the force-feeding of charcoal to purge the body.

Dean cried out in pain as sunlight struck his wide-open eyes like a blow. He aching head was suddenly exploding like a July 4th firework display, and he sagged in the grasp of the two – no three – guys who seemed to be holding him upright just to torture him with light. He staggered forward, shoving away the helping hands.

"Fuck offa me, whatcha tryin' to do? Fuck."

He was burning up but with a dry heat, like he'd stepped into a blast furnace where the heat was so intense it had sucked all the moisture and oxygen out of the air. Sucked it out of his body too, if the inside of his mouth was anything to go by. He'd kill for just a sip of water right now, let alone a cool beer. He felt like he'd swallowed a desert-full of dust.

He remembered some crazy shit about cartoon characters come to life, and a huge wolf and shit….Sammy. He remembered the old (young?) Beothuk man telling him Sammy was here after all, realising that all this time his brother had been with the people Nonosabawsut had called pale strangers, and then some Norse god telling him some crap about going to find Sam; and all he knew was he needed to get out of here and get to his brother, stat.

So it fucking sucked that his legs didn't seem to want to cooperate, fucking things were like over cooked spaghettios, and that he couldn't focus his eyes for shit, and that his head was so jumbled up he couldn't think straight. Viking gods? What the ever-loving fuck?

Blind and overheating until his brain was boiling, there was only one place Dean could be.

Hands were grabbing at him, trying to stop him and he knew what would come next. It would be the freezing cold chains and the sharp teeth and the blades flashing dull red in the half light, and the torture that never ended except when Alastair gave the word and then it was a slow rebuilding of his shredded flesh and the soft caresses and the caring (lying) words that had him crying out and opening his legs for just a little love and a sliver of pleasure amidst all the pain and he couldn't take that, not again, never again.

So he fought like a madman, wrenched himself free and ran, not caring where he was going, just desperate to get away.

:::

Kiim watched anxiously as the tall stranger broke free of the grasp of the braves who were trying to restrain him and careered blindly off towards the edge of the village. Clearly the moonflower was making the young man crazy, and Kiim was as aware as the Beothuk holy man that if they couldn't counteract the drug's effects soon, there was a real risk that this Dean Winchester's heart could give out under the strain. While her brother and his friends chased after the wayward stranger, and Nonosabawsut stood by helpless, too old to run after the fugitive, she decided it was time to take charge of the situation.

She ducked back into her tepee, grabbed the small leather flask containing the sedative she needed and swift as her spirit guide the deer, she ran to where the braves had tackled the big man to the ground. They appeared to be wrestling with him and losing.

"Leave him be!" she commanded, as Dean flailed and shouted what were pretty obvious obscenities at everyone, though fortunately nobody could understand a word he was saying.

Esiban obeyed with alacrity, persuaded more by the punch to the nose that Dean had just landed than his sister's peremptory tone, and his friends were quick to follow suit. The Beothuk braves backed off gratefully, nursing a bloody nose, rapidly swelling black eye and two split lips between them. Kiim ignored them all, focussing her attention on the panting man kneeling in the dust at her feet.

Her careful stitches in his broken head wound had been ripped out and the wound was bleeding freely again, blood dripping down his face. But that was the least of her concerns as she moved very slowly and carefully to crouch down in front of him. He raised his bloody head to stare vaguely in her direction, his eyes unfocussed and wild. Kiim was very conscious that he could probably see very little except dark shapes against a too bright background, given the state of his pupils. Nonosabawsut had explained this to her before, that moonflower caused some people terrible pain from sunlight in particular, through an exaggerated sensitivity to light.

"Dean Winchester," she said, keeping her voice gentle and soothing.

He said something harsh but with a questioning intonation, and she took that as an invitation to move closer and put a calming hand on his quivering arm. She flinched a little at the dry heat he was giving off; another warning sign that the drug was reaching a dangerous point for the young man. His body was burning itself up with no outlet, unable to sweat to cool itself down naturally.

He shuddered under her touch, but allowed her to run her hand down his shoulder and across his chest. His heart was beating fast as a frightened mouse, and she knew she was right to try this treatment as soon as possible.

"Dean Winchester, you must drink this potion, every single drop, and then you can rest while your body slows down."

As she spoke, she brought the unstoppered flask to his lips, at the same time lifting his right hand and wrapping it around her own, so that he felt that he was controlling the action of drinking for himself. She knew he couldn't understand her words, but hoped that he could hear her concern for him and recognise that it was genuine. When his fingers curled around hers and moved the flash to his dry lips, she hoped that was a victory.

:::

Dean was in torment. Demons were rending him, coming at him from every side, and he was burning, burning, burning. He screamed and cried out and tried to get away, but they followed him, tearing at his flesh with their sharp, sharp claws, never letting up, never letting go. He thought it would go on forever, just like before, only this time there would be no angel to drag him out of the pit because Castiel was gone. Tears sprang up in his eyes, unbidden and unwanted. He would never see Sam again.

Then all of a sudden the demons did let go and seemed to vanish and he fell to his knees, not trusting the respite, heart still clattering nineteen to the dozen (and who said that these days? He didn't know, maybe Sam, or Bobby?), his breath coming back but in harsh pants that seared his chest and made him feel ungrateful for the gift of air.

Slowly he became aware of a soft feminine voice saying his name, and he looked up, flinching at the whitelightknives that were thrusting through his skull. The silhouette of a woman was hunkered down in front of him, not close enough to crowd him, generously leaving him room to breathe. Mom? He tried to be a good boy, and held still when she reached out all careful-like, as if she was petting a strange dog, and touched a cool, cool, blessedly cool hand to his arm. All the while he allowed her touch, she was talking to him, her voice low and soothing even though he couldn't understand a word.

There was a nagging sense that he should be remembering something important, because this girl (not Mom, younger, different) was familiar and nothing to do with Hell, but his thoughts were too jumbled for him to make sense of them. He wanted to push her away, afraid he'd hurt her because he was a bad man, he'd let himself get broken and done such evil things and she was too young and beautiful and pure to waste her time with such a sad, sorry, pitiful creature as him.

He wanted to pull her close and rest his aching head in her lap and let her run her slim fingers through his hair and cool his fevered brow with a single touch. He wanted to hide inside the dark curtain of her hair and never come out again.

He thought about saying _yes_, and _please_, and wondered why he wasn't allowed to say those words any more. Saying no was so much harder, took more strength than he had left in him, but now that was all that was left for him to say. He seemed to have lost the reason for that somewhere in the moonflower fog, why he wasn't important any more except in helping Sam cling to that solid _No_. But then he'd never been the one who mattered, that had always been Sam. Dean was the first born but the last in line, and being named the Michael sword had always been ridiculous, had always felt like a mistake - so maybe it just meant that the world had righted itself when Michael stole away Adam because he got bored waiting for Dean to say yes.

When the girl (Kiim her name was, he remembered now) pressed the open mouth of the leather flask to his lips he grumbled half-heartedly because it wasn't a nice 30 year old malt, but just swallowed the bitter liquid without really questioning it, and was pathetically grateful for the velvety darkness that wrapped him in its embrace. He floated away formless, welcoming the fall into anonymity. It was blessed numbness and more than he deserved.

:::

Kiim watched Dean's throat bobbing as he swallowed, wondering at the dark reddish stubble that was growing on his chin and down his neck, so different from the men of the Beothuk who rarely grew facial hair like this, and never anything but raven-black. It seemed to add to this man's significance to her people, that his hair glinted red-gold to match their sacred colour.

The stranger had calmed almost immediately at her touch - another wonder, and Nonosabawsut had told the braves to back away to leave her in peace to deal with him. _He is called Dean Winchester_, the holy man had told her, and hearing his full name certainly appeared to have a calming effect on the young man.

She was drawn to touch his face, and stroked her hand curious and tender over the sharp prickle of hair that was sprouting up on his pale cheek. Her finger traced the strange scattering of light brown speckles that covered his skin, so unusual and fascinating, just like the patterns on a blue jay's eggshell. He leaned into her touch, his pupil-dark eyes closing as the sedative took hold. She let her palm curl around the throbbing vein in his neck and smiled as the racing heart-beat began to slow down. Nonosabawsut came over and helped her to lower his dead weight to the ground and she couldn't help grinning when she heard her brother and his friends grumbling.

"I suppose we'll have to carry him back to your tepee now. Next time you bring home a stray, Kiim, make it something smaller!"

"Yes, and lighter – how about a puppy, or a bird, or better still, a flower that you can put in your pouch and carry yourself!"

"Remind me again, why are we keeping him any way? He doesn't seem very useful and he's certainly not ornamental with that unhealthy pale skin and hair like a porcupine."

Nonosabawsut saved Kiim the trouble of answering.

"If the Thunder god sees fit to say he will help this man, I hardly think we can refuse to do the same."

The young braves fell silent at that, and Kiim noticed they were much more respectful and gentle in their handling of the unconscious man as they lifted him one more time and carried him back to her tepee.

Once Kiim was satisfied Dean was safely settled back onto the furs and blankets where he had spent his first night with the Beothuk, she went outside to discover Esiban her brother, Ishikode her cousin and several other members of the tribe gathered around Nonosabawsut. In such a small group of people, word travelled swifter than a flock of deer fleeing from wolves, and everyone wanted to know the story behind the pale stranger and the Thunder god. Kiim was curious too. It was a rare and wonderful thing for any holy man, even one as wise as her grandfather, to come across one of the gods in their spirit walking.

Nonosabawsut began to tell the story of Dean's dream to his enraptured audience.

:::

Thor had few weaknesses, but words had never been his forte. He had always been more a god of action than of verbalisation, so naturally Thor decided the best way to persuade his brother was to demonstrate.

Seizing the startled Loki, Thor whisked them away across Bifrost to Asgard. Let the emptiness of the playground of the Norse gods be a testament in itself.

Loki walked in bewildered silence through the echoing cavernous halls, kicking idly at the abandoned golden shod drinking horns that littered the straw covered floors, stepping round the heavy embroidered curtains that flapped in the cool breeze, stirring up the dust motes and setting them dancing in the sunlight that streamed through open shutters and illuminated the vacant passageways.

"Where is everyone?" He asked, when he finally returned to Odin's feasting hall where Thor sat waiting patiently, alone. "Where is Freya? Heimdallr? Sigyn?"

"I don't know." Thor looked up, his face carefully schooled so his fear and sadness wasn't showing. "I came here some weeks ago and found everything in disarray. Odin was gone, they said, and nobody knew where. Nothing new there, I thought, but Frigg was so agitated I said I would go seek out the All Father, and so I left to roam throughout Midgard and beyond. Everywhere I went the world tree Yggdrasill was withering and dying, and I found nothing but vacant lands where once giants and gods thrived and fought. Only this world of men remained, so I returned to tell everyone what I had discovered, only to find Asgard too was empty of all life."

"This should not be possible. Where I have just come from, in the future, I am certain Asagard still existed, albeit weak and ineffectual. Odin and Baldr were dead, it is true, but only freshly killed by the fallen Archangel, Lucifer. How can they be missing here, now, if they were still alive to die then?" Loki protested. The dichotomy was making his head ache.

"But you said that you felt no power when you tried to reach for it, and that it took the strength of another god to send you back here. So even there, in whatever thread of time was being spun for us, Asgard was no longer a force to be reckoned with." Thor hesitated for a moment, then seemed to come to a resolution.

"Come with me."

Loki stared after his foster brother as Thor strode purposefully back outside, resenting the casual assumption that he would do as Thor commanded. Then he shrugged sulkily and followed.

The two gods halted at the edge of the shimmering rainbow bridge.

"Reach out now, my brother, tell me what you feel."

Loki stared out along the path of Bifrost, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Reluctantly, he reached out.

"Well?" Thor asked after a few long moments of silence.

"I feel something is calling me. I feel different." Loki said slowly.

"Do you not feel the strength you lost flowing back into your limbs? Can you feel the belief these people have in _us_ – in the thunder and the chaos, in Wakinyan and Ksa? I think here we have many names, but to these people our form and our roles have meaning, significance, importance."

Loki was breathing faster, his heart was beating stronger. Thor was right. This vast land felt like home. Its people, though scattered over many miles from ocean to ocean, were open and receptive and strong in the way that his Vikings had been when he'd first arrived in the Northlands, so many years ago. He had missed that connection with his people and was only now realizing the debilitating effect of its gradual erosion. Faith in Asgard had been slipping away, swamped by the worship of the White Christ, and Loki could see now that his old life had been getting moldy and stale for some time.

"Yes! Apart from within the Vinlanders' settlement, these people are strong in their beliefs and I can sense their respect for our many aspects. They are fierce but they have humour. I like them." Loki paused, thoughtful.

"They remind me of our Northmen, when we first came down from Asgard, you and I."

He grinned at his brother, his eyes alight with the prospect of much new wickedness. "You are right, Thor. We should stay here where the land is vigorous, young and fresh, and ready for us to play with, you and I."

Thor's face lit up at his brother's words and thunder rumbled in response.

"But first, I have a promise to keep. Together we must send the Winchesters home to meet their fate."

:::

Sam was aware of nothing but the resigned expression in Karlsefni's clear blue eyes, so close to his own where their foreheads were pressed together, their position a bitter parody of a lovers' embrace. The world had narrowed to those eyes, and the feel of the knife hilt in his hand. Sam's fingers tensed as he shifted his grip to slide the blade home.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, so that only the engill could hear him. The sorrow he felt was matched by his determination. Nothing and no one could be allowed to get in his way. If killing an innocent man was what he had to do in order to survive; if this was the only way he could step off this animal hide and find a way to send him and Dean back to their future, where Sam could finally atone for setting Lucifer loose on the world, then so be it. Sam wanted to look away, but he owed it to the Viking to bear witness to his bravery and to watch him die.

Barely an inch of Sam's blade had pierced Karlsefni's side when an almighty clap of thunder followed by a collective intake of breath from the audience of Vinlanders announced the return of the Norse gods.

"Hold!"

Sam found himself frozen in position at the command. The trembling of Karlsefni's muscles straining to keep him in that awkward bow over Sam's knee was reverberating through Sam's body too, but neither human could move – Sam caught in Thor's influence, Karlsefni because any movement was likely to cause Sam's knife to cut deeper.

A low chuckle, and Loki was thrusting his grinning face into Sam's, and Sam couldn't so much as grit his teeth, let alone flinch away. Karlsefni however, grunted and twitched in surprise, and Sam could feel the give of flesh around the tip of the blade. Shit. Sam was going to murder the engill by accident if someone didn't do something quickly. Loki's breath smelled like candy, which was just too weird, and a painful reminder of Gabriel.

"Look what we have here, Thor my brother. We left the children to their own devices for a moment or two and they are trying to kill each other. How delightful."

"Leave them be, Loki." Thor said, ignoring the collective gasp from the Vikings as they realised who had crashed their hólmganga. "That is not why we are here, and you know it well."

Sam felt a firm hand take the knife from his nerveless grip, gently easing it out of the young engill's body. The red-headed god helped Karlsefni to his feet, and Gudrid was the first of the Vikings to recover her senses and rush to her husband's side. Sam wondered if the two gods were going to leave him stuck in this awkward crouch. He could feel his own blood sticky and warm running down his bare arm, as well as Karlsefni's blood gumming up his empty knife hand.

As the raging adrenaline from the fight ebbed out of him, Sam was chilled at how close he had come to killing a good man. He was weak with relief that he hadn't been any quicker with his knife, and that the engill looked like he had every chance of surviving to see his kid grow up, in spite of the blood running freely down his flank.

"Sam Winchester," Thor said, and Sam found that he could move again. Embarrassingly he immediately fell back onto his butt, his balance shot by the sudden release of the force that had held him in place. He couldn't help a scowl when he heard Loki's malicious chuckle, but then Thor was there, offering him a hand up.

Sam stood eye to eye with the Norse god, while the Vindlanders all watched with avid curiosity. The grey-green gaze that held his own was fierce yet honest. It didn't feel like any other pagan god encounter he'd experienced. Sam was the first to look away, seeking out Karlsefni in the watching crowd. He was relieved to find the Viking leader still on his feet and pressing a cloth to his wounded side without too much discomfort on his face.

:::

Under the influence of the moonflower potion mixed with the new sedative Dean dreamt he was running. He felt energetic and young and the world was so full of exciting scents and sounds. His stride carried him far and fast and his legs never tired. His tongue lolled as he panted happily, the fragrant breeze ruffling his fur was intoxicating. After a while he became conscious of a warm presence at his shoulder matching his loping stride, pace for pace running alongside him in companionable silence. Somehow (as was the way of dreams) he didn't need to turn his shaggy head to know that it was Sam there beside him, or that his brother was in the shape of his own spirit guide, a great cougar; lithe and puissant and lethal.

It didn't matter where they were going, all that mattered was the motion, the exhilaration of speed, running for the sheer joy of it. He wanted the dream to last forever. Just him and Sam, running.

Of course, it couldn't last, nothing good ever did.

The next time Dean woke up, everything was dark. It look him a few moments to realise this was not necessarily because it was night-time, but because his eyes seemed to be covered with something. When his hand went up to tug at the cloth that he discovered he was tied down and started to panic.

Before he could totally freak out, a familiar voice spoke up and there was the warm touch of strong fingers on his wrists, plucking at the ties there and holding him steady.

"Hey, hey, Dean. It's okay, it's me. Kiim just had to tie your hands down to stop you scratching at your eyes in your sleep."

"Sammy." He felt a constriction in his chest he hadn't even been aware of loosen along with the strips of leather binding his wrists.

"How'd you find me? Are you okay? Where've you been?" His freed hand automatically went to undo the cloth around his eyes, but Sam was there again to stop him.

"I'm fine and I'll fill you in on where I've been later, but you might want to keep the blindfold on a bit longer, Dean. Nonosabawsut said it might take a couple of days for your eyes to recover from the dose of Jimson weed he gave you."

"That stuff was Jimson weed? Fuck. No wonder I feel like death warmed up." Ignoring Sam's advice, Dean yanked the blindfold down while struggling to sit up. It was a mistake.

Even though the light wasn't bright – he was indoors after all – it stabbed into his eyes like knives. He gave an involuntary grunt and swayed where he sat, feeling nauseous and more grateful than he'd ever admit to that Sam's solid bulk was there to lean on.

"Yeah," Sam sounded exasperated and sympathetic at the same time as he took Dean's weight without comment. "And you remember the saying Dad taught us about it's effects - _Blind as a bat, dry as a bone, red as a beet, mad as a hatter, and hot as an oven._ So what symptoms have you got - apart from the blind as a bat part, then? You've always been madder than a whole town of hatters so we can't count that one, and you don't look _too_ red…"

"Aw, shit, Sammy." Dean allowed his brother to lower him back down but batted Sam's hand away when he tried to readjust the cloth strip back over Dean's eyes, grabbing it and pulling it back into place himself.

"Did Nono say how long before the effects wear off?" Dean mumbled, choosing to ignore Sam's carefully disguised question about how he was feeling. The usual Winchester teasing banter allowed for a lot of avoidance in the place of outright lies. For instance, there was no way he was going to tell Sam that he wasn't entirely sure how much of what was going on was real and how much was delusion woven by the drugs; or how for a moment there when the blindfold was off, and before the white light crashed through his skull like summer lightning, he'd seen the tawny-gold eyes and pink-black muzzle of the spirit cougar in the place of Sam's face, and welcomed it like an old friend; or that he that he knew that Toto was lying alongside him because he was tangling his fingers in the big wolf's thick fur as they spoke.

Nor was he going to mention to Sam that he was scared that when the moonflower's influence had worked its way out of his system he would never see their spirit guides again, and that there was a part of him that didn't want that to happen.

Sam didn't allow Dean to lie back down, rather he ended up half propped up against Sam's knee while his little brother brought a cup of cool water to his lips. Dean wanted to push Sam's hand away and take the cup himself but somehow the touch of Toto's warm flank and the coarse texture of the wolf's fur kept his fingers where they were, anchored by his side, and he allowed Sam to feed him the much-needed drink.

"Guess that answers the dry as a bone part then," Sam commented, a wry note in his voice that had Dean huffing. He hated it when Sam caught him out.

"Shut up and get me more water, bitch," he said, trying and failing to hide a smile.

Three cups of water later, and Dean's stomach was starting to feel a little bloated. He was also starving hungry, and couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten. Man, he would kill for a burger and fries, followed by a giant piece of pie. Even the images in his brain of all that delicious food couldn't stimulate any saliva. His mouth still felt dry, which told him the problem was the Jimson weed, and it was messing with more than his eyesight.

He turned to Toto, who was contemplating him with a thoughtful blue gaze.

"Hey buddy, what do you say we get the hell out of Dodge? Wonder if Sammy brought his ruby slippers to get us all home."

"Dean? Who're you talking to?"

Sam sounded more than a little freaked, and that was when Dean remembered Sam couldn't see Toto. Aw shit. Now his little brother would think he was loco. And he was probably right. Nonosabawsut had dosed him with loco weed after all. So maybe Toto wasn't really there, and that fucking awesome cougar wasn't actually sitting behind Sam, licking one heavy paw with that pink furred tongue. Then he remembered that he was wearing a blindfold and shouldn't be able to see anything at all, which kind of answered that one.

He was definitely still under the influence, sedative or no sedative. Great. A thought struck him then – how did he know whether Sam was even real? He could be an illusion too, and Dean could still be in the sweatlodge with Nonosabawsut, spaced out of his head like some freaking sixties hippie.

A large hand squeezed his bicep.

"I am real, I'm here in Kiim's tepee with you, and Nonosabawsut and Kiim. Stop panicking, you're gonna hyperventilate."

Ok, so Sam sounded pissy enough to be real.

"I am not pissy!" Sam exclaimed, his tone belying his words as he sounding more aggrieved than ever. _Aw shit, I must've said that out loud_, Dean thought.

"Dean, you are saying all this crap aloud. You've been talking non stop to spirit guides and yourself and god knows who else since you woke up."

A girl's voice he recognised as Kiim said something Dean couldn't understand, and he grabbed onto Toto to use the wolf's very solid bulk to help him sit up again. His rational mind (and Sam) might be telling him the spirit guides were a figment of his imagination, but Toto felt very much present. Added to which, Dean could still _see_ the animals, blindfold or no blindfold.

Once he was sat upright, and leaning his back against the warm (illusory?) wolf, he realised that his brother was having a one sided conversation with Kiim. At least it sounded one sided to Dean, as he could only understand the words Sam was using, not the Beothuk language.

"Dude!" He protested. "What the hell?"

Behind the blackness of the blindfold, Dean could see the golden-eyed cougar turn and pad its way over to where he sat, while he could only feel Sam's presence by the brush of displaced air on his face. It was weird. Almost as weird as Sam speaking English and getting replies in an ancient language that he could obviously understand.

"Are you ok, Dean? Not feeling dizzy?" Sam had his concerned voice on but Dean was having none of it. He waved a hand in Sam's general direction, ignoring the disconcerting impassive scrutiny of Sam's cougar.

"I'm fine. Just help me up, will ya?"

Sam gripped his wrist and Dean pulled himself up onto his feet, wavered for a second until he felt Toto pressing up against his thigh. Dean grinned and let his left hand dangle by his side, fingers surreptitiously scratching at the wolf's silky ear.

"See, m'fine. Now tell me how you can talk to my friend Kiim here, when I could only do it when I was in la la land."

"Oh, yeah. About that. Come on outside, there's a couple of people you need to meet before they try and send us back to the future."

:::

Back to the future. No doubt Sam had organised for Doc and Marty McFly to wait with the Delorean parked up outside. That would beat freaking angels, anyhow. Dean sniggered, but quietly, to himself, because that shit never got old but Sammy was usually too uptight to get it. He allowed Sam to keep hold of his elbow and guide him through the flap of the tepee, even though Toto was all the guidance he needed. He thought Sam's cougar looked faintly approving, though it was hard to tell. The beast was almost as inscrutable as Sam could be sometimes.

Dean decided he'd call him Bagheera. The big cat stopped and looked over his shoulder at Dean with a look combining scorn and superiority in equal measures as if to say _the Jungle Book, Dean, really?_ even more eloquently than Sam could have spoken the words.

"What?" Dean shrugged as he stepped into the warm touch of the sun. "Bagheera was a panther too."

Against the dark backdrop provided by the backs of his eyelids and the muffling blindfold Dean could clearly see two figures waiting for him (sadly not Doc and McFly).

"Hey, Thor, and … Not Gabriel." Dean said.

:::

When Dean greeted Thor so casually, Sam had to quickly double check the blindfold was still in place. How the hell was Dean seeing the Norse gods when he couldn't see the ground he was standing on, or his own brother? He didn't realise he'd asked the question out loud - _he was as bad as his drugged up big brother talking to himself_ - until Nonosabawsut provided him with the answer.

"Your brother still has one foot in the spirit world, so he can see things that walk in both worlds now, such as your weyekin spirit guides, as well as Ksa and the Thunder God. This ability will wear off as the moonflower's influence fades."

The Beothuk holy man fell silent as Thor walked towards their little group, Loki slouching along behind him, and Sam had to bite his tongue on the many questions he had about Dean's condition. He didn't want to give the pagan gods any excuse to change their minds about sending the Winchesters back home.

"Dean Winchester, we meet again." Thor said. "As I promised, I found your brother and returned him to you."

"Yeah, well thanks for that," Dean answered. He was standing loose-limbed with every outward appearance of being unfazed by his enforced blindness, but Sam could see the tension in a tell-tale clenching and unclenching of his brother's right fist that had him moving instinctively closer to Dean until they were shoulder to shoulder.

"So who is this guy who looks like Gabe?" Dean asked.

Sam winced as Loki's face twisted with anger, regretting the fact that he hadn't thought to tell Dean about Loki and Gabriel as soon as Dean had woken up.

"It was your Gabriel who stole _my_ face, human." Loki spat, thrusting himself into Dean's space causing Dean to involuntarily take a step backwards, hands up in a gesture of appeasement. However, before Loki could elaborate his grievances further, Thor hastily stepped in between Dean and Loki.

"Peace, brother. This man had no hand in your captivity. No one alive now was complicit in what was done to you; you must let this rage go, and move on to the new life of which we have spoken."

The tall god looked around at the spell-struck Beothuk and the two humans caught out of their time. When Thor caught Sam's gaze, Sam finally allowed some of his own tension to be released. Thor would keep his word, and his next statement gave Sam the confirmation he had been looking for.

"But first, we must send these two travellers home."

Loki reluctantly backed away from Dean, who let his hands drop to his sides. For the briefest of seconds, Sam thought he saw two shadowy creatures flanking Dean, a wolf on his left, and between Sam and his brother's right side, a big cat of some description. But when he blinked and looked again, they were gone.

Thor and Loki were standing side by side now, like a mirror to the Winchesters, and Sam could feel the power building around the four of them, gods and men, two sets of mismatched brothers, like a storm gathering.

Dean grasped his arm.

"Wait!" Dean yelled over the roar of the wind that the two gods were whipping up, and Sam gaped at Dean as the breeze immediately dropped off at the rude interruption.

"Sorry, man, sorry, I just gotta…hold on a goddamn minute will ya?" Dean spluttered, an embarrassed flush on his cheeks. He turned to the Norse gods, Thor puzzled, Loki impatient, to make his plea.

"Can you just do whatever you did to Sammy, babel-fish me or whatever, so I can say something to Kiim and Nono here?"

Thor remained perplexed, while Loki rolled his eyes in an expression Sam would have recognised if he spent more time studying his own face in a mirror. The Norse Trickster shook his head, but snapped thumb and forefinger together in spite of himself.

"I think that's it, Dean. Why don't you try saying something and see if they can understand you now." Sam said. He beckoned to Kiim and the holy man, who came over to stand in front of Dean. Sam took Dean's hand off his own arm and placed it on Nonosabawsut's shoulder.

"Is Kiim here too?" Dean asked, then smiled when the young girl reached out and took his other hand in hers. "Cool. So, before we go, I just wanted to say thank you for everything, okay? For stitching me up and taking me dream walking and for introducing me to these two…" Dean took his hand off Nonosabawsut's shoulder to gesture at the empty space beside him, but the old man didn't look at Dean as if he was crazy, just nodded in satisfaction as if he could see whatever it was Dean was seeing. Maybe Nonosabawsut had spent so many years with the spirits he had a foot in both worlds all the time, Sam thought.

"They will walk with you now wherever you go," Nonosabawsut said. "The wolf will give you loyalty and the strength of your family, the panther will give your brother independence and courage. You will both do the right thing."

Dean's head dropped for a moment, and Sam thought about the burdens they both carried, and the near hopeless task that faced them and wondered why they were so determined to have Thor and Loki send them back. Then he squared his shoulders, and saw Dean mirroring his action, and he knew they had no choice. Not really. They would return, and they would get those two remaining Horsemen's rings, even Death's, because they couldn't give up the fight.

"Are you ready now?" Thor asked.

The Winchesters nodded. Time to go home.

**Epilogue**

Thor stands with Loki at the foot of a slowly paling Bifrost, thinking that this is like watching one of nature's rainbows fade, when the wind sweeps the rain clouds away and the sun asserts its sway over the world. This place that the Winchesters had called America, but that the red-loving Beothuk and the Mi'kmaq and the Maliseet and the Peskotomuhkati just call the Land, smells like spring to Thor, like fresh earth after a cleansing storm.

The small pocket of Northmen is enough to anchor the Norse gods in their old forms for the moment, but Thor can feel the tug of the beliefs of the People, and knows his brother feels it too. He is touched be a certain sadness that comes with endings, but at the same time, he tingles with the exhilaration that comes with new ventures. Thor's red mane crackles with static, and Loki flashes him a look that is full of mischief mingled with anticipation.

"Come, brother," Thor says, smiling. "A new world awaits us, and we have work to do."

* * *

_**Author's notes:**_

_** Hope you enjoyed this little romp in the deep and distant past!  
**_

_I took some liberties here (ok, a lot of liberties!) with both the Beothuk and the Vikings, and with their myths and legends._

_The Beothuk sadly became extinct as a people in the 19th century. The last recorded member of the Beothuk people was a woman called Shanawdithit, who died in 1829. Because of this, very little is known about either their language or their customs, so I have ended up mixing up the small handful of known Beothuk names with Algonquin words (which from my research seemed to be the tribe commonly accepted as the Beothuk's closest kin)._

_Thor in this story is supposed to be more akin to the Norse Thor than the Marvel one, hence the red hair, and also his significance to the Beothuk, who were said to have been enamoured of the colour red. This fact was recorded in the Viking sagas about Vinland as well as by later European settlers. (This is where the term Red Indian originated)._

_The happenings in the Viking settlement of L'Anse aux Meadows have been very much adapted to suit my story, so don't expect to find much resemblance to the sagas here. All the Viking characters I name here do appear in the Vinland stories, but at different times and phases of the Viking settlement._

_The Beothuk were said to be paler skinned and taller than other Native American tribes, so I am now wondering if some of the Vikings might have either remained on the continent when their colleagues returned to Greenland, or that there might have been some interbreeding that was not recorded in the sagas._

_The idea that Thor and Loki could morph into native North American mythological figures seemed to work for me – with nothing much being known about Beothuk beliefs, I have amalgamated names and myths from Plains tribes and elsewhere in creating this idea of Ksa before he became Iktomi (Coyote), and a Thunder god who is more primeval than later versions, so I've used the name Wak-Inyan which seems to be an earlier name. These creations are not supposed to necessarily correspond to current recorded stories of the Native Americans, as these will have evolved over time any way._


End file.
